As a woman, you are tired of trying diets that work for a short time only to have you fall off the wagon and put the weight back on or worse, put more weight and fat than what you started with. You want to lose weight fast and get rid of the ugly fat for good. You want diet plans that work for all women to lose weight fast, keep the weight off, are realistic and can be sustained.
Healthy Diet Plans Have You Eating More
This might seem confusing at first but any diet plan that is worth its weight (no pun intended) will have you eating more. If you’ve tried a calorie restriction diet, have you noticed that initially you drop weight but after some time on this diet you are starving and once you go off the diet you binge or eat a lot more and you gain weight fairly rapidly. Ever think about why that is? Well, think of weight loss as a game of hormones. When you eat a diet that is low in calories (under 1200 calories a day), there are hormones that signal your metabolism to slow down. Your body is smart and in believes you are slowly starving so it goes into survival mode. This means that all the calories you consume, even though they may be much smaller than what you are used to eating, will start to go towards storing fat. Now consider when you go off a diet and go back to eating normally. Your calories increase, sometimes by a lot. Well your metabolism is still slowed, so now all those excess calories go on to be stored as fat.
So how does eating more help? Well by eating more meals, spread throughout the day, you keep your metabolism stoked. Think of your metabolism as a fireplace. If you have a fire going, after a while, the logs get burned up and the fire starts to die. Add some fresh logs and the fire burns hot once again. By eating meals of the correct portion and right nutrition will keep your metabolism on overdrive and you’ll more easily burn calories off. I recommend eating five to six moderately sized meals a day (or every three hours or so). We’ll discuss the what for nutrition, shortly.
Healthy Diet Plans Have You Eating Whole Foods
Stay away from diet plans that have you eating shakes or protein bars. The “protein bars” are usually nothing more than a glorified candy bar, high in sugar and saturated fat. Also, they never keep you satiated, you are always hungry. Some of the diet plans come with food that is delivered, often frozen that you heat in a microwave. These are a tad better but I don’t really care for them. Most of the time, the portions are really small. Like the shakes and bars, they leave you hungry. They are also loaded with preservatives and highly processed. Boxed food diets aren’t optimal in terms of nutrition; lacking vitamins, minerals and anti-oxidants.
Instead, a diet plan that will leave you satisfied, dropping weight fast and with optimum health will be mostly made up of whole foods. Whole foods are foods that are as close to natural as possible with little to no processing what so ever. Some examples of whole foods include:
- Legumes (peas, beans, lentils)
- Fruit
- Vegetables
- Whole grains (barley, millet, quinoa, and wheat berries to name a few)
- Dairy products
- Nuts
- Seeds
- Chicken (boneless and skinless of course)
- Lean meats
These foods are packed with nutrition and when you compare them to foods that are heavily processed, they will be lower in calories and much lower in fat and sugar. A diet with whole foods will keep you full and it is a diet that can be sustained with long-term success.
Healthy Diet Plans Have The Four Basic Nutrients
There are four essential nutrients that our bodies need: water, protein, carbohydrates and fat. A proper diet and any diet where you want to shed fat and excess weight will contain the right portions of both. Let’s take a quick look at each.
Water
Water is the life fluid that keeps our bodies going. All systems of our body use water and in fact, most of body is made up of water. Water really is the most important nutrient that we need. When it comes to losing weight quickly, drinking more water will:
1. Keep you hydrated
2. Help you feel full longer (less over-eating)
3. Keep the kidneys and liver functioning optimally (efficient fat burning)
4. Help remove fat and waste from the body
All women should drink at least 10 glasses of water each day or more!
Protein
Protein is what our bodies need to maintain, repair and build new tissues like muscle. It is especially crucial when dieting and exercising. Protein is one of the best foods to get full on, again to avoid over-eating. Every meal should have at least a 4oz serving of protein. Some of my favorites are:
- Chicken (boneless and skinless)
- Eggs
- Low-fat dairy (Greek yogurt, cheese, milk)
- Lean red meat and turkey
- Fish (tuna, trout, salmon, mahi mahi, walleye)
With protein, remember to have it with every meal and about 4oz or the size of your closed palm.
Fats
Fats are crucial for our survival as our bodies use them to keep hormones in balance, make use of fat-soluble vitamins and keep our heart, brain and nerves healthy. The thing to remember about fats is that there are different kinds. You want foods that have mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated fats. They will also have an essential fatty acid called Omega-3 fatty acids which are very heart healthy. These are all “good” fats and having them in moderation (60 to 100 grams per day) will only aid in quick fat loss. Here are my favorites:
Seeds
Nuts (almonds, walnuts, pistachios and peanuts are my favorites)
Avocados
Oils (flaxseed, olive and canola)
Cold-water fish (salmon is a good one)
When it comes to oils, I like to use them in making salad dressings or cooking vegetables. I also am a huge fan of natural peanut butter. I love to mix it with a number of foods or eat it by the spoonful (a serving is about 2 Tbsp) because it tastes so good.
Carbohydrates
Carbohydrates are just as important as the other nutrients. The trick is to stick to foods that have more slow-digesting carbs and not so much sugar. This is easy with whole foods but nearly impossible with processed foods. These good carbohydrates can be found in most fruits and vegetables as well as whole wheat foods like pasta and brown rice. My carbohydrates of choice are:
Sweet potatoes and yams
Beans of any kind
Fruit of any kind but I love apples, bananas and strawberries
Oatmeal (sprinkle some honey and cinnamon on for a tasty treat)
Quinoa (a whole grain that is a complete protein, similar to couscous)
There are so many diets out there, they can make your head spin. To lose weight fast and keep it off, you wanted to know what diet plans a woman can use to lose weight fast. Any diet plans that focus on having you consume the four nutrients (water, protein, fat and carbohydrates) in proper abundance and in as close to natural form as possible will have you shedding fat, feeling great and looking your best as quick as possible.