Losing Weight Without Starving Yourself

I think one of the reasons that people really hate and avoid losing weight is that they correlate it with basically self torture.  Most people look at dieting as eating boring, bland foods that leave you anything but satisfied, and I have to admit, there are some times that I felt like that.  That is, until I learned that eating right, and yes, even going through that painful phase of dieting to lose the excess weight in the first place, can be a very gratifying and tasty experience, as long as you know how to get the most bang for your buck out of your calorie consumption.

One of the first rules of thumb is to eat foods that have a high fiber content.  What this is going to mean for you is avoiding the foods that are processed, since most processed foods are devoid of any real fiber that fills you up and makes you regular.  Foods that are high in fiber are whole foods, that satisfy as well as stick to you for a while.  Foods that are an example would be leafy greens like spinach leaves (one of my favorites is making a spinach leaf salad to go with every dinner at night), apples, bananas, broccoli, cabbage, and a myriad of other foods, but you get the point – most of them are unprocessed, natural foods like fruits and veggies.

One of my favorite cooked veggies that gives a lot of bang for it’s buck is sauteed cabbage. It’s dirt cheap, high in fiber, and has very few calories, and you can make it very flavorful by cooking it right.  What I do is take cabbage, sliced julienne style, add a little bit of olive oil, pepper, paprika, sea salt, and garlic to a fry pan, then add the cabbage.  I sautee it til it’s soft, and it ends up being an orangeish color because of the paprika, with a wonderful, rich flavor to boot.

Another rule of thumb is to buy only low fat dairy. If you buy yogurt, make it low fat, if you like milk, make it skim.  Studies have shown that low fat dairy products may actually help you lose weight and burn fat off the body faster, although it’s not really clear why that is yet.  Always looks at food labels, and check the fat content, the portion sizing for the calories given per serving, and the fiber content, and if you’re not getting the most bang for your buck, pass it up for something else that’s comparable but has a better nutrition label.  Eating this way takes time to learn, but you will be satisfied and start to see the pounds come off in no time.