Losing weight does not need to be complicated. Just follow the 8 weight loss principles outlined below, and you’ll be on your way to a slimmer and healthier body.
1. Follow the KISS principle and keep it simple. There is no need to prepare fancy recipes for weight loss, count your calories, or follow a complicated meal plan. It’s best to keep it simple, and this means basing your nourishment on fresh, raw plant foods - greens, fruits and vegetables, while limiting or eliminating everything else.
2. Consider the salad your main dish: eat it first at lunch and dinner, and even breakfast (make it a fruit salad if you like). We tend to eat more of whatever we eat first because we are the hungriest, and the good news you can eat as much salad as you like, as raw greens and vegetables can be eaten in unlimited quantities. Your goal should be to eat at least one pound of raw greens and veggies, which is less than 100 calories of food. Just remember that a salad should include lots of greens and raw vegetables and fruits, if you like, with some lemon juice sprinkled on top. Potato salad or Caesar salad, with lots of mayo, fatty dressing, croutons, and other stuff, don’t count. Successful, long-term weight control and health is linked to high consumption of raw greens, vegetables and fruits.
3. To save time, consider drinking your salad. If you find chopping and chewing all these greens and veggies exhausting or boring, just throw them into your blender with some juicy tomatoes, cucumbers, celery, add a little bit of water, if your blender cannot handle the job, and drink your salad instead. I recommend that you add some herbs - basil, cilantro, parsley, dill, and some sweetener - a little bit of honey, or some sweet fruit - to make your drinkable salad even more delicious.
4. Eat as much fresh fruit as you like, but at least four servings every day. Consuming lots of fresh fruit is satisfying and filling, so eat as many fruits as you like with throughout the day. Fruits are high in calories, compared to greens and vegetables, but it’s okay to splurge, especially if you have a sweet tooth. The best dessert is blended fruit, or blended frozen fruit. You can blend your fruits with greens, add some water, and you will have a delicious green smoothie that will satisfy your cravings for sweets and other unhealthy snacks.
5. Make sure you eat a variety of greens and veggies. There are a variety of foods that you can use to make vegetable salads, including lettuce (romaine, bib, Boston, red leaf, green ice, arugula, radicchio, endive, iceberg), celery, spinach, cucumbers, tomatoes, mushrooms, broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, onions, radishes, snow peas, carrots, beets, cabbage, and all kinds of sprouts. Even more vegetables can be eaten cooked - you can steam them or make into a delicious vegetable soup.
6. Beware of starchy vegetables and grains. For fastest weight loss, limit cooked, high-starch grains and vegetables to one cup per day. Consider any vegetable that is not green to be a high-starch vegetable (except eggplant, peppers, onions, and mushrooms). Fill up on the raw vegetables and cooked green vegetables first. However, make the most of your starch consumption from starchy vegetables - such as butternut squash, acorn squash, corn, turnips, parsnips, cooked carrots, sweet and white potatoes, etc - rather than starchy grains, refined starchy grains - such as bread, pasta, or white rice - should be even more restricted. If you decide to have some bread, a thin whole-wheat pita is a good choice for sandwiches. Limiting the portion size of rice, potato, and other cooked starchy vegetables to one serving is not necessary for everybody to lose weight, only for those whose metabolism makes it difficult to lose weight. Most people can still achieve an ideal body weight by cutting our refined starches only, such as white bread and pasta.
7. Eat beans or legumes every day. Beans are considered a dieter’s best friend. Beans have a high nutrient-per-calorie profile and help prevent food cravings. They are digested slowly, which has a stabilizing effect on your blood sugar and a high satiety index. Eggplant and beans, mushrooms and beans, greens and beans and all high-nutrient, high fiber, low calorie main dishes. Add some beans to your salad, or have some bean soup. Eating soup helps you lose weight reducing your appetite by filling your stomach.
8. Limit animal and diary products. To lose weight quickly, eliminate animal products entirely, or limit it to just a little lean fish, such as flounder or sole, once or twice a week, and an egg white omelet once a week.
Read more weight loss tips, and advice on how to losing belly fat quickly using only healthy, natural methods.