How Healthy Is Your Diet For Weight Loss?

One question I ask everyone that I see is “how is your diet?”, because no matter what their goal is, diet is going to be important. The response that I get from almost everyone is that they eat healthy, however, once they tell me what they are eating, it is quite often not the right sort of food for what they want to achieve. Providing your body with the right nutrition for your goal is just as important as the right training, and the difference between getting diet right or not is massive. It can literally be the difference between achieving your goal or not! Sadly, most people don’t really know what the right diet is for their goals. And even more sadly, there is so much mixed information (and misinformation), that it can be very difficult to find the right diet, even after extensive searching. The fact that there is an entire industry built around this misinformation means people quite often go down the wrong path without even knowing it.

To help make things easier, I have put together a list of my 5 diet best tips for losing weight, and how each of them will benefit you in your own weight loss!

• Don’t Under-Eat!

This may sound counter-intuitive to losing weight, but eating less food will actually do you more harm than good in the long run! While you will notice initial weight loss results, eating less will slowly reduce your base metabolism, making your body burn less energy across the day. This is why restrictive diets often get “plateaus” in weight loss; you cut calories and lose weight until your body slows down to match the cut, then it balances out and you no longer have a calories deficit. The only way to lose more weight in this way is to keep cutting more and more calories, which will eventually result in a rebound, and a lot of the weight coming back on again.

• Don’t Skip Breakfast!

Skipping breakfast is one of the most common things I hear from people, and it is one of the worst when it comes to losing weight. When you first eat in the morning, it is like you are turning on the furnace with your metabolism. The longer you take before having your first meal, the longer you spend in the slow, non-burning state. For this reason alone, it sounds like a no-brainer to make sure you are eating something when you wake up, because it will allow your body to burn more calories, and will give you more energy throughout the day! Further to this, skipping breakfast can lead to mid-morning food cravings, which can often result in eating the wrong foods!

• Eat More Frequently!

As I mentioned in the last point, when you eat something, your metabolism spikes up in response. The flip side to this, is that it will then slowly reduce again until the next time you eat something. Eating more frequently gives your metabolism less of a chance to slow down, and will help it to stay up across the day. Some studies even indicate that doing this over a prolonged period (6+ months) can actually slightly increase your metabolism!

• Limit The Amount Of Carbohydrates You Are Eating When Not Training!

OK, so most people have probably been told that carbohydrates are “bad” when it comes to weight loss. This isn’t necessarily true, however, if you are eating them when your body doesn’t need them, your body will store more away as fat. To combat this, try to time your carbs to times that are before or after training, especially strength-based training. During these times, your body does need the extra carbs, and will use them both for training energy and recovery!

• Allow Yourself To Have “Cheat Days”!

Following a strict diet is great and all, but if you don’t allow yourself to relax from it every now and then, blow-outs will happen and ruin the hard work! I like to tell people that if they do the right thing 80-90% of the time, and the results are coming in as they want, then they can do whatever they want for the remaining time. For most people, this is doing the right thing Monday – Friday, and then relaxing on a Saturday night. This also helps to stop your body getting “too used” to the diet and adapting to it.

While there are lots more different things that people can do to help increase their weight loss, I find that these 5 tips are easy to stick to, and can really help most people! Having variety in your diet is also important, especially if you aren’t getting everything you need in 1 meal. I have put together a full weight loss recipe book, with 35 different recipes for Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and Snacks. If you want a copy, simply contact me on aaron@newstartpt.com.au and I can send you a link!