Principles of healthy weight loss

When it comes to losing weight, the details don't matter much. Principles are important.
Every forensic nutritionist, whether a diet expert or a representative of the Medical Nutrition Foundation, agrees that there are some basic principles of healthy weight loss that apply to everyone. No matter how camouflaged they may be, these principles are the core of every good diet plan, whether it's a dietitian or a bestselling plan. And no one achieves lasting weight loss and optimal health without following these principles, consciously or unconsciously. While there appears to be no one right way to eat for health and lose weight (on the level of detail), you must be familiar with the basic principles. This will help you avoid the diet plans that are actually breaking them and choose the specific plan that is best for you. /
1. Balance

Critics of popular diets often claim that such diets encourage unbalanced eating by advertising certain foods and even whole food groups as banned. The example they always point to is the infamous cabbage soup diet. But this is a very extreme example.

What critics overlook is the fact that the average American diet is somewhat unbalanced at first: heavy in animal foods, processed foods, fried foods, sweets, fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. It's difficult to find a common diet that discourages dieters from consuming a variety of natural and fresh plant foods, and thus supports, if not a perfectly balanced diet, at least a more balanced one.


In Breaking the Metabolic Code, James Laval, pharmacist and naturopathic physician in Cincinnati, Ohio, explains how nutrient imbalances of various kinds can lead to weight gain, and vice versa, how improving nutrient balance can facilitate weight loss.


To give one example, an underactive thyroid gland is a common cause of slow metabolism, and thus weight gain. Among the many factors that can reduce thyroid function are high levels of adrenal stress hormones such as cortisol, and as Laval notes, "eating too much sugar triggers the release of adrenal hormones." The average American diet includes 18% sugar. The average popular diet is definitely not!


2. Timing of feeders

A series of recent research has shown that when we eat, it is almost as important as what we eat in terms of improving body composition. "We learned that it is essential to coordinate energy intake with energy expenditure," explains John Ivey, PhD. Co-author of Nutrient Timing (Basic Health, 2004). "Calories are best used when they are consumed at times when there is a strong demand for them in the body."


The morning is a time of relatively high calorie demand. Calories consumed in the morning are more likely to be used as an energy source compared to calories consumed later in the day compared to stored as fat. In fact, a study from the University of Massachusetts found that those who skip breakfast regularly are 4.5 times more likely to be overweight than those who eat it most of the time.


Eating smaller meals more frequently (five or six times a day) is another proven way to improve coordination of food intake with energy needs. According to statistical data, the average American citizen eats three large meals a day.


3. Self-monitoring

Research has shown that just paying attention to what you eat is one of the most effective ways to reduce the calories you eat. Self-monitoring strategies are a staple among members of the National Weight Control Registry, a research pool of several thousand men and women who have lost an average of 66 pounds each and kept their weight less than 6 years on average. "They are totally aware of their eating," says Susan Phelan, Ph.D., a spokeswoman for NWCR. "About half of them reported that they were still counting calories and fat grams."


Another useful habit of self-monitoring that is common among both people following NWCR and those seeking weight loss on popular diets. According to Phelan, this habit allows her subjects to avoid the insidious upward crawl that puts back many of the initially successful diets. "Because they weigh themselves so much as they do, they can catch these slips," she says. "If they do something about it right away, they are more likely to be successful in the long run."


4. Selective restrictions

Every popular diet has a "prohibited foods" list. The foods and types of specific foods that make up the menu and how strictly they are prohibited will vary from program to program. The Atkins Diet bans nearly all high-carb foods. The Ornish diet forbids animal foods. The blood type diet at Peter D’Adamo blocks a long list of seemingly unrelated foods for each of the four basic blood types.


No weight loss diet can succeed without restricting the foods responsible for creating large stores of body fat. Most mainstream nutritionists agree that "bad fats" found in many processed foods and animal foods and "bad carbohydrates" in sweets and processed foods are the main culprits. Interestingly, nearly all members of the NWCR choose to restrict the intake of high-fat foods. Only seven percent of them follow a low-carb diet, Phelan says. 

However, mainstream nutritionists caution against overriding food restrictions. "Eliminating certain foods and food groups, especially those who enjoy them, is a recipe for disaster and can lead to feelings of deprivation, not to mention a nutritional imbalance," says Elisa Zaid, MS, R.D, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association.


James Laval describes only "soft" restraints for his clients and in the many nutrition books he's written. He says, “There are teachers who say, 'You can never have another dessert again.'” Tha

It puts a guilt complex in people. ”When the options are all or nothing, there is no happy middle ground between dieting and being unhappy and staying away from it completely.


5. Low calorie density

The concept of caloric density or energy density refers to the number of calories per unit volume in a particular food. Food with a lot of calories in a small area is said to have a high calorie density. Since water and dietary fiber do not contain calories, foods with a lot of water and / or fiber tend to have a lower calorie density. In general, processed foods are dense in calories, while fruits and vegetables, with their higher content of water and fiber, are less dense.


Calorie density is important for those seeking to lose weight because research has shown that people tend to eat a steady amount of food regardless of how many calories it contains. In a study conducted in Pennsylvania, women were fed either a high-density, medium-density, or low-density meal three times a day. People in the three groups ate the same food weight, but the women who ate the high-density meals ate 30% more calories than the women who ate the low-density meals.


6. Consistency

Eating healthy isn't the same as being vaccinated: One shot and you are covered for life. Instead, it takes a daily, lifelong commitment. There is growing evidence that the more consistent you are with your healthy eating habits, the higher your chances of maintaining a healthy weight.


Once again, members of the National Weight Control Registry provided an example. "One of our most recent findings is that it maintains a very consistent eating pattern," says Phelan. "Unlike many dieters, they tend to eat the same food during the week as they do on weekends. The same is true for holidays versus the rest of the year. They tend to have a consistent eating pattern throughout the year."


The persistent myth of dieting is that those with long-term success begin with a more moderate, slow, and steady approach to dieting and who take strict restrictions only to save them after a few weeks or months and regain their weight. According to Vhelan, there is no evidence that long-term successes start differently. The real difference is that they simply keep doing what they started out with!


7. Motivation

Why are some dieters able to maintain their new healthy lifestyle indefinitely while most fade away after a few weeks or months? This is currently one of the most important questions in weight loss research. There is no definitive answer yet, but there are indications that it is mostly about motivation.


Certain types of weight-loss diet drivers are more likely to lead to long-term success than others. For example, "One of the things we found is that people who are medically motivated to lose weight are more successful in the long term than people who don't," says Phelan. Nothing beats a NDE to keep you on the straight and narrow path to healthy eating!


More evidence for an interpretation of motivation comes from the fact that almost every other explanation can be excluded.


Successful dieters are often assumed to have inherent willpower. However, most NWCR members actually failed several weight loss initiatives before finally succeeding, suggesting that something about their circumstances rather than their psychological makeup was the key.


The "bad genes" that fight weight loss are often blamed. However, Phelan says, “Many [NWCR members] have parents who are overweight or overweight as children, suggesting that they may have a genetic predisposition to obesity, but still be able to lose weight.