The First Two Steps To Weight Loss

Over the past few decades, a multitude of restrictive “miracle” diets and methods have been misleading people looking for solutions to control their weight and recover their health.

Truth is, losing weight is not rocket science and there are no miracle solutions to success. So here are two key principles to long-term weight loss.

Quantity: Pay Attention to Calories

The debate over calories is all the rage right now. Although there are other factors to take into account when it comes to weight loss and health, not paying attention to the calories you consume in a day is invariably part of the problem. It is therefore important that you get some basic knowledge on the matter so you can lose weight at a moderate, regular pace.

To lose one pound of body weight per week, a weekly deficit of 3500 calories is necessary, i.e., every day you have to eat 500 calories less than you burn on a daily basis.

If your nutritionist calculates that according to your daily activities, you have to consume 1500 calories per day to lose one pound of body fat per week, you’ll probably think twice before ordering a 500 calories milk shake. Making informed choices along with a few tweaks here and there can go a long way!

Quality: Adjust Your Servings

The majority of our customers are surprised when their nutritionist shows them the recommended pasta serving size. Indeed, if you’ve been using three cups as serving size throughout your life, you’ll have a hard time listening to your satiety signal and feeling full with a single cup of pasta. You need to learn about recommended servings sizes, and make the effort to measure your servings and relearn how to feel full.

Learning how to balance your plate will help you ease into this transition. You will have to determine new proportions of carbs, protein, and fat, the tree macronutrients that have a major impact on satiety. Listening to your satiety signals becomes that much easier when you eat a balanced plate.

Source: diabete.qc.ca

Make your own experiment by trying these two dishes:

Plate #1 – Only pasta and sauce

Plate #2 – One quarter (¼) pasta, one quarter (¼)  90 g turkey meatballs, and the remaining half (½) vegetables

For what looks to be the same quantity of food, the distribution of macronutrients in plate #1 is not balanced, so you will need to eat a larger serving (and thus more calories!) to reach satiety. In addition, it won’t take long before you feel hungry again after your meal, as carbs are quickly absorbed when they are not combined with protein or fat.

I suggest you read Carbs, Proteins, and Lipids: a Powerful Trio! to learn more about these macronutrients.

You should dismiss miracle solutions and stop thinking it’s impossible to lose weight. By following these two simple tips, and with the help of your nutritionist, I’m sure you’ll succeed.

Alyssa Fontaine, P.Dt., nutritionist for Zero Diet

The Zero Diet brand is first and foremost the conviction that healthy eating is a primary factor to attaining a healthy weight and a balanced lifestyle. Thus, we offer nutrition counselling with nutritionists who are members of the OPDQ with our Zero Diet nutrition program in our centers and in companies. We have also developed a healthy frozen food product line that fulfills rigorous nutritional criteria as well as two healthy Zero Diet cookbooks.

The First Two Steps To Weight Loss is a post from Nautilus Plus. The Nautilus Plus blog aims to help people in their journey to fitness through articles on training, nutrition, motivation, exercise and healthy recipes.
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