A good diet can change your life, helping you lose weight, eat better and feel healthier. A successful diet requires you to make changes, and those changes are most likely to be successful if they are well planned. It is also important to assess your diet for both nutritional adequacy and a healthy rate of weight loss.
Dieting
Diets are a popular way to lose weight. The basic formula of weight is that, if the calories you eat equal the calories you burn, your weight will stay the same. This means that eating fewer calories will be the key part of your diet. Using more calories through physical activity can also help you meet your goals. Making sustainable changes that you can keep doing for months or years will help ensure long-term success.
Planning
Setting goals is the first step of planning. Your goals should be small changes at first, because they will be easier to keep doing. As Louisa Whitfield-Brown noted in the June 2009 issue of the "Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics," dieters can be discouraged by a lack of food choices, lack of flavor and variety, and the cost of diets (see references 1). Good planning and reasonable goals can help overcome these obstacles. Write down what you are going to eat. Plan out healthy, low-calorie meals, make a grocery list from them, and buy only the ingredients you need.
Nutrition
There is more to food than calories. Once your diet is planned, you need to assess it for proper levels of vitamins, minerals and fiber. According to a study published in the September 2008 issue of "Nutrition Journal," well-planned diets that have adequate amounts of fruits and vegetables will provide enough nutrients for most people (See References 2). By entering the foods you eat into an online nutrition calculator, you can easily assess the levels of nutrients in your diet.
Weight Loss
Checking your rate of weight loss is an important step in assessing your diet. You want to make sure that your diet is working, but losing weight too fast can be dangerous. According to an article published by the staff of the Mayo Clinic in December 2009, a goal of losing 1 to 2 pounds per week is healthy and realistic (See References 3). Faster weight loss most likely means that water or muscle is being lost from your body instead of fat.
Considerations
Diet assessment and planning are a key step in starting and maintaining a successful diet. Make sure that changes you plan are ones that you can keep doing for a while. Assess the changes you are planning for nutritional adequacy. As you monitor your diet, ensure that your weight loss is progressing at a healthy and realistic pace. Step by step, the small changes that become part of your life will lead you to a healthier lifestyle.
References
- "Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics"; An Investigation to Determine the Nutritional Adequacy and Individuals Experience of a Very Low Fat Diet Used to Treat Type V Hypertriglyceridaemia; Louisa Whitfield-Brown; June 2009
- "Nutrition Journal"; Commercial Weight Loss Diets Meet Nutrient Requirements in Free Living Adults Over 8 Weeks: A Randomised Controlled Weight Loss Trial; Helen Truby; September 2008
- MayoClinic: Weight Loss
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