Setting dietary goals is an effective way to enact healthy lifestyle changes. In four weeks you can improve the way you eat by balancing your caloric intake and considering what foods provide you with adequate nutrition. Accompanying your ambitious dietary changes with regular exercise can enhance the benefits of making smart food choices.
Balanced Caloric Intake
You require a certain number of calories every day to provide energy for your body's basic functions. If you eat the same number of calories your body needs, your weight will stay the same. If your diet goal is weight loss, eating fewer calories than you need will force your body to burn energy from your stores of fat. Reducing your daily intake by 500 calories can contribute to healthy weight loss of 1 lb. per week. Choose foods for your diet that have high nutritional benefits for their caloric value.
Balanced Nutrition
While reducing your caloric intake, maintain the same supply of vitamins and nutrients. Your health and the metabolic processes that help you burn fat rely on the nutrition that comes from your food. The US Department of Agriculture recommends you eat adequate portions of grains, fruits, vegetables, proteins and dairy every day. Choose healthy varieties of these foods, including whole grains, lean proteins, beans and seafood for protein, and low-fat dairy products.
Regular Exercise
Regular exercise will not only enhance the weight-loss benefits of your diet, but it is an effective way to improve your health while dieting. Thirty minutes of exercise, five days a week, helps reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease, and can improve your blood pressure and cholesterol. The most efficient exercise for weight loss and cardiovascular benefit is aerobic exercise, which increases your heart rate, such as running, swimming, cycling, rowing and jumping rope.
Considerations
If your goal is weight loss, avoid diet strategies and fitness regimens that claim radical weight loss results in short periods. Fad diets and their exercise counterparts frequently include unhealthy weight loss strategies that are not sustainable, effective or safe. The same principles that apply to a healthy four-week diet apply to healthy dieting for longer periods. Continue eating and exercising to make your four-week diet a step toward habitual healthy living and eating.
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