“What do you eat?” “What diet are you on?”
Those are common questions I receive. Before I tell you what types of food I stick to and why, let me please acknowledge the D-word at the top of this blog; DIET.
Today, the word diet is evil. Many people hear the word diet and go into a slightly depressive state. A wedding is coming up, it’s time to go on a diet. Swim suit season is quickly approaching, time for another diet. I blew my diet this weekend. I’ll start over on Monday. Sound familiar? Well, it’s time to turn the negative word diet into a positive!
Remember in grade school, and the animal research projects we had to do? We had to fill out the follow questions about our animals:
- What is the name of your animal?
- What is the height of your animal?
- What is the weight of your animal?
- What does your animal look like?
- How long does your animal live?
- What is one interesting fact you learned about your animal?
AND…
- What is the diet of your animal?
Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the word diet as:
a: food and drink regularly provided or consumed diet of fruits and vegetables
b: habitual nourishment diet and disease
c: the kind and amount of food prescribed for a person or animal for a special reason diet
d: a regimen of eating and drinking sparingly so as to reduce one’s weight diet
The reason I’m telling you this is to remind you that the word diet doesn’t need to be a negative word. We all have a diet that we are on. Just because someone decides to pay more attention to their own diet, doesn’t mean they are just beginning a diet. Maybe they are changing up their current diet. However, we’ve all been on a diet since birth. Where the word diet turns negative, depends on what we decide to put into our bodies; our normal diets.
The diet that helps me lose weight
I eat every two to three hours to keep my energy levels high through out the day. My meal times look something like this.
6am: Breakfast (350-400 calories)
8am: Morning snack (100-150 calories)
10am: Mid-morning snack (100-150 calories)
12pm: Lunch (250-300 calories)
2pm: Afternoon snack (100-150 calories)
4pm: Mid-afternoon snack (100-150 calories)
6pm: Dinner (400-600 calories)
To maintain, I personally try to eat between 1600-1800 calories every day.
To lose, I personally try to eat between 1200-1500 calories every day.
IMPORTANT: This is for me personally. Everyone is different. Take into consideration your height, weight, male/female, if you exercise, the type of work you do, and definitely do your research and consult with your doctor before doing exactly what I do.
CalorieKing is a good website to begin to figure out how many calories to eat. Play with the numbers and see what works best for you.
From much of the research I have found, going under 1200 calories a day is dangerous for our bodies.
Foods high in protein
Protein is the number one food I’m always looking for. Protein gives my body energy to keep it moving all day long. Protein also takes longer to digest than other foods. When I eat foods high in protein, my body works harder and longer because my body needs to contract my muscles more in order to digest that food. When my body works harder, I burn more calories, and I don’t even need to go to the gym!
Protein is how I base my meals. I focus on what protein I am going to eat and then plan everything else around that. I eat between 15-20 grams of protein per meal.
Foods I eat that are high in protein are:
- Chicken
- Fish
- Beans
- Eggs
- Whey Protein Powder (Great for smoothies.)
- Turkey
- Greek yogurt
- Nuts (Be careful of which nuts and their portion sizes. Nuts can also be high in fats. About a quarter cup of nuts is one serving size. I will eat a quarter cup of nuts as one of my snacks.)
Fruits and Vegetables that are fresh or frozen
Fruits and vegetables really do help keep you full and functioning all day long. I set my first goal to eat at least one fruit and veggie everyday because I didn’t eat any before my weight loss. Now, I naturally reach for fruits and veggies as my snacks and side dishes. It’s second nature for me. Recently, I realized that I do eat 5-9 servings of the recommended fruits and vegetables from the FDA’s food pyramid. I was pretty excited about that.
I do avoid canned foods because they have preservatives in them that may contain more sodium than my body needs. I try to go to local farmers markets for my fruits and vegetables because they are usually the least expensive.
Most of my snacks throughout the day are fruits, and my meals have a side vegetable with them.
Fiber and Calcium rich foods
Fiber is one of the best ways to push your food through your body to get that food’s nutrients to the correct parts of your body. Not to mention, fiber helps to clean your body of unused nutrients, helping your body weigh less.
Your bones need calcium because bones are mostly made of calcium. Bones are important because they are the supporting walls of your body. Bones hold everything together.
Note: If you want to strengthen a part of your body that consists of bones, you will need to eat or drink calcium but will also need to strengthen the muscles around those bones. For example, I want to strengthen my knees. My knees aren’t just bones. I can’t strengthen my knees without strengthening the muscles that surround my knees.
Foods I eat high in fiber and calcium are:
- Broccoli
- Spinach
- Brown Rice
- Quinoa
- Potatoes with the skin on them (The skin has all the fiber.)
- Apples (One of my daily snacks.)
- SKIM milk (Unless you are lacking fat in your diet, drink skim milk.)
Foods low in carbohydrates
I rarely eat breads, pastas, and white rice. I receive all the carbohydrates my body needs from foods I already eat such as fruits.
I also try very hard to avoid added sugars because many added sugars turn into carbohydrates and vice versa. If I do eat added sugars, I try to stick to below 24 grams of added sugars per day.
My final note…
Before you decide what you want to eat, do some research. Google the phrase “What does (insert name of food here) do for my body” and read a little bit about that food. That’s how I found out that grapes were good for my heart!
Once you get in to the swing of things, choosing the right foods for your body’s nutrition will get easier, and will become second nature.