Good diet meal plans are low enough in calories to help you lose weight, but they must also be satisfying and diverse enough to guide you toward lifelong dietary changes. This sounds like a tricky balance, but continuing research into diet, metabolism and weight reduction reveals a few tricks and principles for creating meal plans that can help you achieve your weight-loss goals.
Breakfast
A good diet meal plan always makes room for breakfast. This first meal of the day gets your metabolism started and might keep you from eating too much at lunch. Eating breakfast every day also might be a good strategy for maintaining weight loss. Nearly 80 percent of members of the National Weight Control Registry -- a database that tracks people who have lost weight and kept it off for at least a year -- report that they eat breakfast every day. Only 4 percent say they never eat breakfast.
Meal Composition
Many nutritionists now urge dieters to plan meals with the glycemic index,, a well-researched tool developed in the 1980s to help diabetics control blood sugar levels. The glycemic index rates foods according to how quickly they cause blood sugar to rise and fall. Foods with a high glycemic index cause a quick rise and steep fall; those with a low glycemic index provide a steady rise and gradual drop. Meals made up mostly of simple carbohydrates such as sugar and white bread have a high glycemic index. But meals that combine carbohydrates, protein, fiber and fat reduce the glycemic rating, which can help you feel full for longer.
Food Choices
Good diet meal plans include plenty of low-energy-density foods. These foods, which are typically high in fiber or water content, allow you to eat satisfying portions for fewer calories. High-energy-dense foods, in contrast, pack a lot of calories in a small volume. Foods with low energy density include vegetables, fruit, tofu, cooked whole grains, some cereals, many types of fish and broth-based soups. Soups appear to be especially helpful for dieters struggling with hunger. This is because the brain records the entire volume of soup as food rather than water, which helps you feel more satisfied on fewer calories.
Examples
You can create both simple and elaborate meals using low-energy-density foods and the glycemic index. You can, for example, start a meal off with a soup or salad or add more vegetables and less of everything else when making pasta dishes, chili, pizza, casseroles, scrambled eggs or stir fry. For breakfast, try adding peanut butter to hot cereal or smoothies to boost protein and healthy fat content. If you like waffles, serve them with a tablespoon of almond butter instead of syrup to reduce the glycemic rating.
Substitutions
Good diet meal plans show you how to make substitutions. For example, you can save a lot of calories by replacing regular pasta with very-low-calorie shirataki or kelp noodles, both available in Asian markets and health food stores. To save calories in a recipe that calls for sour cream, use Greek yogurt; its high protein content makes it taste very rich, but it is quite low in calories and fat. To take a break from meat or cheese, experiment with tofu, which is much lower in calories per ounce because of its water content.
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