Josh said 10 years, 4 months ago:
Before going into the nitty-gritty of calorie counting and so forth, you can improve your health a great deal by changing the staples of your diet and your patterns of eating. This sounds like a big deal, but is actually pretty simple and relatively painless. I’m not going to tell you to eat tree bark and fungus, for instance. That kind of extremist dieting is for morons.
First, the obvious stuff: fast food and soda. Cut it out.
Fast food is almost always extremely unhealthy, high in saturated fat and trans fat, very calorie-dense, and should thus be avoided by everyone. The occasional burger is harmless in the grand scheme of things, but if fast food is a staple of your diet, cut it out.
Soda is the other thing that should be massively reduced by almost everyone. Soda is extremely calorie-dense, has no nutritional value, and for various reasons, you shouldn’t be dumping massive amounts of simple sugars into your system. There is debate over if diet soda is neutral or still bad for you; my suggestion is to limit it, too. There are a lot of un-substantiated negative myths about diet soda, and although it’s still healthier than regular soda, it may keep you in a habit of preferring overly sweet food. It’s still probably best not to drink diet soda. Drink water instead, with the occasional coffee or tea for variety. After a few months of this, your soda cravings will slowly dissipate.
For those with a sweet tooth, all kinds of sweets are calorie monsters. But the worst of the worst may be ice cream, especially premium ice creams – a pint might give you a few days worth of saturated fat and half the calories you should be taking in. You don’t need to never eat something sweet again – that’s ludicrous. Just eat it rarely and in smaller amounts.
Finally, be aware that many “frappuchino” coffee beverages are made almost entirely of dairy fat and syrup, and can have absurd amounts of calories. Brewed tea and coffee are almost calorie-free, and a packet of sugar only adds about 20 calories, but some of these blended “coffee” drinks have on the order of 400 calories.
Focus your meals on traditionally cooked food. Try to consume the least amount of processed junk you can and try to only eat whole, naturally occuring foods. Eating these will keep you more full than the processed stuff and for less calories. There is a bunch of discussion about certain pieces of food being bad, and others good. As a rule of thumb, if it was part of a traditional diet, if you could make it by hand, it is good (eggs, butter, olive oil, oatmeal, fruit, …), if not, it’s not (margarine, soda, pizza, gummi bears …).
Many people make the first steps towards weight loss just by cutting out soda and dropping the Big Mac content of their diet. Aside from being made of unhealthy ingredients, fast food and soda are so awful because they make it easy to ingest immense calories without being especially aware that you’re doing it. I’m not telling you that you need to abandon everything you like forever. You just can’t have obviously unhealthy foods be a main component of your diet. Having a reasonably-sized portion of something “unhealthy” that you really like 1-2 times a week is not a problem if the rest of your diet is in order. But for too many people, unhealthy foods are their diet.
Specific kinds of foods you should eat
Note that the list below does not account for condiments and toppings; it just lists good food items. For instance, turkey breast is very good for you. Turkey breast covered in heavy cream sauce or deep fried in lard is not. Use your brain here.
Your dietary staples should include:
Lean animal protein sources (fattier meats are acceptable if trying to gain muscle mass), including but not limited to:
Most turkey and chicken in general, especially if it is skinless. Turkey and chicken breasts especially.
Ground turkey, chicken, beef or pork.
Virtually all forms of fish, even the fattier fishes are very good for you. Tuna, while also good, should be eaten sparingly if you’re concerned about mercury consumption.
More exotic-type meats, if you can find them: buffalo, ostrich, lamb, elk, venison, alligator, etc.
Whole eggs. The unhealthiness of whole eggs is a myth; contrary to past assumptions, they have no impact on heart disease at all. The main reason for this is that cholesterol in food does not impact the actual cholesterol level in your blood; almost all your cholesterol is made in you liver, based mainly on your saturated fat and trans fat consumption.
Whole grains, including but not limited to:
Whole wheat bread, bagels, rolls, etc.
Whole wheat pasta
Brown rice
Oatmeal
Whole grain breakfast cereals and muesli
Virtually all fruits and vegetables, including beans and dry-roasted nuts. Vegetables are satiating, protect against a variety of diseases, are rich in almost every essential micronutrient and help with digestion.
Healthy fats like olive oil (for sauces, dressings & low-temperature cooking) and canola oil (for high-temperature cooking), and Omega-3 rich fish oil.
Dairy products like plain yogurt, cheese, cottage cheese, and milk.
Watching your weight:
Your body weight isn’t everything – composition is more important – but it is certainly good to know. What follows are tips for tracking your weight.
A common pitfall in tracking weight is to weigh yourself at different times of the day. You body weight can easily swing 5 pounds based on how hydrated you are, when the last time you ate or had a bowel movement was, and so on. For most consistent results, weigh yourself first thing in the morning, preferably fully evacuated. Incidentally, this is also a lower weight than any other time of the day.
Don’t weigh yourself every day, you’ll see too much random variation to know if anything is going on, and the overall change you are looking for is only going to be a few pounds a week. So weigh yourself once a week.
Are you trying to lose weight? Lift weights. Lifting burns tons of calories, and lifting weights while dieting will cause you to retain more muscle and lose more fat than just diet and/or cardio. Because the name of the game when it comes to not looking awful is FAT LOSS, not weight loss. Do you want to be that guy who loses lots of weight and still looks flabby and useless? Of course not.
Here’s the article: http://liamrosen.com/fitness.html#part1
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