Just like you cannot build a house without a plan, you cannot build a healthier body without one either. You do not have to spend hours studying spreadsheets of macronutrient ratios and calorie content to successfully plan your diet for weight loss. Jotting down your day's meals in the morning or planning weeks in advance can help you lose weight.
Dieting Basics
To lose weight, you must create a negative calorie balance--meaning you burn more calories than you consume. A pound of weight equals 3,500 calories, so achieving a 500 to 1,000 negative calorie balance per day will result in a 1- to 2-lb. per week weight loss, a safe and manageable rate, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Once you know your target daily intake, a diet plan can help you hit that target. You use a calorie plan much like a financial budget says certified personal trainer and nutrition coach Tom Venuto in his book " The Body Fat Solution." A diet plan allows you to plan in advance exactly how many calories you will allocate to each meal or snack, ensuring that you do not "spend" all your calories before noon and end up starving or overconsuming later in the day.
Expert Insight
A diet plan can help you eat frequently, which can increase your metabolic rate and prevent extreme hunger. Researchers from the University of Nottingham in Great Britain compared women who ate six meals at regular times daily with women who ate three to nine meals at irregular times. They found that the regular meal consumers ate less calories overall during the day and experienced a higher rate of metabolism related to digestion of their food, as published in the "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition" in January 2005. A diet plan helps to remind you to eat at specific times. Diet plans help you break bad habits like forgetting to eat when you become busy or eating scantily at breakfast or lunch in order to save calories for later in the day.
Adherence Benefits
Diet plans help keep you on track by allocating meal and snack times to prevent overeating at any one meal. They help prevent extreme hunger due to skipped meals that result from poor planning. If you plan your diet for a week, it streamlines your grocery shopping and prevents you from going to the store when hungry and making unhealthy, impulse purchases. A diet plan also helps you establish what Oxygen Magazine calls "go-to" meals--ones that you know you can whip up and eat without blowing your calorie budget.
Overcoming Challenges
A diet plan can help you devise strategies for more healthful eating at restaurants, social functions or when you travel. If you know you will be indulging at a meal later in the day, a diet plan allows you to successfully lighten your calorie-load earlier in the day so you can afford more calories at the event and not overshoot your calorie budget. If you will be on the road and have limited access to healthy foods, a diet plan helps you prepare by outlining diet-friendly snacks to carry with you.
Awareness
A diet plan also makes you aware of the nutrition and calorie content of foods. You might be more likely to measure out your foods and pay attention to portion sizes if your diet plan calls for specific servings. To prepare a diet plan, you must read nutrition labels to budget your calories and this can help you understand which foods have fewer calories for more volume and satisfaction.
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