Nutrition Tips for Weight Loss

Simply stated, four factors control weight loss: decrease intake of total calories, increase intake of calories from nutrient-dense food, decrease intake of calories from fat and sugar, and take smaller bites at the table. Put another way, this means greater intake of nutrient-dense foods (low calorie: nutrient ratios), and reduced intake of energy-dense foods (high calorie: nutrient ratios), and eating this aggregate more slowly. The most helpful thing one can do to accomplish this is to decrease the calorie density of their diet so that one can eat more without going over the calorie budget.

The best way to accomplish this is to eat more nutrient-dense foods – those foods that offer the most nutrient bang per caloric buck: fruits, vegetables, and lean sources of protein: fish and chicken. Whole grains are also nutrient dense but these days most are fortified refined grains. If you want to better understand how you are poisoning yourself with nutrition and what you can do about it, subscribe to Aeon+ today To be sure, there is more. Portion control. Here’s what often happens when dieters downsize: they compensate by taking larger bites of healthy foods. Yes, nutrient-dense foods are more satisfying, and as a people, we are learning to portion things such as fruits and vegetables, but we over-eat when they are available. The issue here is that people have a pre-populated set-point for capacity of their stomach, and filling that with low-energy dense foods displaces the high-energy dense foods – those with a high calorie: nutrient ratio.

None of this precludes more sustained (‘aerobic’) or sustained (‘anaerobic’ for muscle building, or ‘resistance’) forms of physical training. Equally, a demand upon yourself to strap on your walking boot straps as much as possible and as often as possible, in order to burn 3,500 calories in a week, and thus mark the red line on the scales, is crucial. Sure you can keep flags up. Then it’s a question of: can you keep the wind in your sails? All the usual ideas about dietary adherence (I mean, realistic small ones! Not the full kaboodle…) apply, along with weighing yourself weekly on an agreed (by your doctor) trustworthy scale, and diagnostic re-evaluation of the challenge if things are going wrong. Finally, there are some simple behavioural aids, such as mindfulness in eating, calorie record keeping, as well as formalised meal plans.