7 eating habits that make your diet more effective
“Dieting? Oh, I am an expert, I did it hundreds of times!” – this joke sounds familiar to most of us. Why cannot we succeed? Because we lack proper eating habits. Here they are.
Every change requires adequate approach. To ensure effectiveness you should consider the prime factors. What you do every day has more effect than what you do from time to time. That is the power of habits.
How to develop them? Firstly, repeat your activities maniacally. It is also important not to overload yourself. Small changes, easier to implement, can have bigger results than one big revolution, and they require less effort to persevere.Here are 7 eating habits that are easy to introduce. Will you give them a try?
1. Eat breakfasts
Dieticians keep insisting on this one, and we keep with our old excuses – “I don’t have time in the morning, I hurry to work, and besides I am not hungry at all”. Morning hunger is a physiological reaction and if you don’t feel it, it simply means you ate too much the evening before. If you eat your last meal at 6-8p.m. – and it is not a huge portion of spaghetti – you will get hungry by morning for sure.
Tip: Breakfast is a good start of a day. Research shows that avoiding breakfast leads to uncontrolled gluttony during the day and heightens the level of cortisol (stress hormone), which does not help losing weight.
2. Eat regularly
This point is just as unpopular as the breakfasts. Majority of us have plenty of excuses not to follow this rule: job, tasks, responsibilities. Minimum plan is 3 main meals a day: breakfast, dinner and supper. Optimal plan suggests one or two additional snacks during the day.
The worst thing you can do to your body and your diet is to pitch into the food once or twice a day. You will devour more, because you are very hungry and act impulsively, which adversely affects your metabolism and burdens your stomach. Lots of experts highlight evading meals and eating primarily during the second half of a day, when we should slowly forget about eating, is the main cause of weight gain. Old Chinese proverb says “eat your breakfast alone, share the dinner with a friend, and give the supper to your enemy”.
3. Drink water
Very often we confuse hunger with thirst. Our body needs water, as it mostly consists of it. If your diet is to be effective, be sure to include hydration as a must.
When you feel hungry beyond the mealtime, try to drink. It might just be enough to calm your hunger. Another excellent habit is drinking a cup of warm water with lemon juice every morning. If you don’t have problems with sugar, you can add a teaspoon of honey. Leave out the honey in water the night before - it will facilitate absorption of beneficial ingredients. Just remember not to mix the honey with hot water!
4. Cross sugar out of your diet
It sounds like a truism, but indeed is essential to ensure effectiveness of any diet. You don’t even need sugar at all! It is highly addictive and tricky stimulant.
Read your labels; look not only for sugar, but also glucose-fructose syrup and sweeteners such as aspartame, acesulfame potassium, mannitol and sorbitol. Their harmfulness has not yet been proven in absolute terms, yet it is hard not to notice how their massive food production correlates with huge increase of obesity throughout the world. There are lots of research proving interdependence between consumption of these chemicals and the mechanism of overeating or uncontrolled gluttony.
5. Supplement vitamin D
Healthy, well-composed diet should provide desired intake of nutritional ingredients and vitamins. This does not apply to vitamin D, and in Eastern and Central Europe we all suffer from its deficiency. Doctors emphasize even bigger shortages in overweight persons and people on a diet, as adipose tissue is responsible for catching and storing the vitamin. If you don’t spend 15-20 minutes on the sun daily, with your face and shoulders uncovered, if you avoid sunbathing and always, even during the smallest exposition you use sun blockers – this may be your problem as well.
People who have sufficient vitamin D amount in their blood tend to burn fat much quicker than persons with its deficiency. Vitamin D along with calcium decreases production of cortisol, the stress hormone responsible for waistline adipogenesis, or fat deposition. Correct level of this vitamin stimulates production of leptin, hormone responsible for feeling of satiety - the less leptin, the greater the appetite. These are just few of important functions of vitamin D.
If you are not sure what dose you should use, check the vitamin D level in your blood. It is a simple diagnostic test that marks your deficiency level and enables proper supplementation.
6. Refrain from eating anything your great grandmother would not consider edible
That means, avoid processed foods. Instant potatoes? No! Frozen ready-made meal? Better cook your own!
Cooking and preparing your meals does not have to be time consuming, and by doing so you control what you eat. You don’t trash your body with preservatives and you consume fewer calories, as you cut down on sugar. You would be surprised in how many products sugar is found, and we don’t mean sweets… Cooking your own meal is the healthiest and most reasonable solution.
7. Let go sometimes! Have your „cheat day”!
Diet, however you may look at it, is always a sacrifice. Don’t torment yourself, be your own best friend! Support yourself!
If from time to time you feel like eating a piece of brownie, or your favourite apple pie – just do it! And be sure to enjoy it.The concept of a “cheat day” implies treating ourselves from time to time to some forbidden food. This actually helps persist with renunciation – in the end, the food is a pleasure! If you chose one day a week to eat some forbidden food, it will definitely not ruin your diet. Just remember not to stretch this day into three or four days a week.
Awareness is the key!