Twelve Tips For Losing Weight and Improving Your Overall Health

When you are trying to lose weight, you must become knowledgeable about nutrition to maintain your overall health. One of the major reasons that people gain weight is because they don’t understand the importance of minerals and vitamins. If you aren’t eating the proper diet, then you will have intense cravings for any type of food, including items that have no nutritional value. Here are some tips for maintaining your health while also losing weight.

Nutrition Tip 1: Eat Plenty Of Vegetables

Begin your grocery shopping in the produce section of the supermarket. Look for fresh dark leafy greens, yellow bell peppers and cherry tomatoes that contain numerous nutrients such as vitamin A, iron and antioxidants. These foods also contain a lot of fiber to help you feel full and satiated so that you won’t want to eat junk food.

Nutrition Tip 2: Choose Whole-Grain Foods

Instead of buying pasta and bread that are made from refined flour, you must look for whole-grain products at the supermarket. To determine if a product is made from whole grains, you should read the labels carefully. If you want to control the amount of refined flour in your diet, then you can learn how to bake bread and make homemade pasta.

Nutrition Tip 3: Consume Lean Proteins

Your body needs protein to maintain its vital functions, so you should not avoid eating nutritious lean meats. Some of the best types of protein include salmon, chicken or beef, but you should eat small portions to reduce your consumption of fat. A portion of fish or meat is the size of a deck of playing cards rather than the large portions that are served in restaurants.

Nutrition Tip 4: Ingest Enough Calcium Each Day

Without enough calcium, your teeth and bones become softer. It is important to ingest calcium each day by consuming dairy products such as yogurt, milk and cheese. However, to avoid gaining weight, you must choose low-fat dairy products. Remember that a portion of cheese is only a small cube or slice.

Nutrition Tip 5: Avoid High-fat Condiments 

You can ruin a diet plan when you use high-fat condiments such as salad dressings or mayonnaise. Other bad condiments can include ketchup or barbecue sauce that is made with a lot of sugar. You can learn how to make your own vegetable dips and salad dressings to control your calorie consumption.

Nutrition Tip 6: Drink More Water

It is easy to destroy your diet plan by drinking a lot of calories. If you drink soft drinks, sweet tea or alcoholic beverages, then you will likely gain weight. You should remain hydrated by drinking plenty of water each day, and you can drink tap water or flavored water that has zero calories.

Nutrition Tip 7: Stay Away From Junk Foods 

Junk foods are everywhere, but you must stay away from these items in order to lose weight. Candy bars, corn chips and ice cream are low in nutrients but high in calories. These junk foods also often contain chemicals that affect your well-being.

Nutrition Tip 8: Eat Fruit For Desserts

If you enjoy eating something sweet after a meal, then choose fruit instead of baked goods. Buy bags of fresh apples and oranges at the supermarket, or you can eat canned and frozen fruit instead. Fruit is also an excellent choice between meals when you want a snack.

Nutrition Tip 9: Learn How To Cook

When you visit restaurants for your meals, you don’t know what the ingredients are in the recipes. If you don’t know how to cook, then enroll in a cooking class or borrow some cookbooks from your public library. When you cook your own meals, you can control the amount of fat, sodium and sugar in each recipe.

Nutrition Tip 10: Don’t Deep-fry Foods

Instead of deep-frying foods such as chicken or potatoes, learn ways to prepare ingredients with broiling, boiling or baking methods. When you fry foods, the ingredients absorb the oil, making the meat or vegetables unhealthy for your body.

Nutrition Tip 11: Have Written Snack and Meal Plans

You can control your daily food consumption by having written meal and snack plans. After writing your menu plans, you can create a shopping list to buy the ingredients required for your daily snacks and meals.

Nutrition Tip 12: Seek Nutritional Counseling 

If you are having problems losing weight, consider a pre-prepared meal plan like Nutrisystem for men products and counseling services. Nutritional counselors will teach you how to plan meals that are balanced with the proper percentage of carbohydrates, fats and proteins. It is easy to communicate with a counselor on the internet or on the telephone so that you can understand proper nutritional habits.

About Mark

Hi, I'm Mark Dilworth, Nutritionist, Dietary Strategies Specialist, Nutrition for Metabolic Health Specialist and Lifestyle Weight Management Specialist. Since 2006, I have helped thousands of clients and readers make lifestyle habit changes which includes body transformation and ideal body weight.