Why you still need carbs in your diet

you should include carbohydrates in your diet

There is so much debate about how harmful carbohydrates can be to the health. As such, some experts have advised zero carbohydrate diet to ensure weightloss. However, there is a need to include carbohydrate in your diet because of its many benefits to your health.

Below are reasons why you should include carbohydrates in your diet

1. It gives energy

Carbohydrates are known as energy giving food and you know how important it is to stay energized when trying to lose weight.

Imagine trying to ride a car without fuel inside, you will agree with me that it is impossible for the car to move. This is how important carbohydrate is to your body. It serves as fuel because it provides glucose. Without carbohydrates, you will burnout from exercise and feel lazy to carry on and this will affect weightloss.

2. It helps to prevent heart disease

“Research shows that whole-grain carbs, like bread, pasta, and rice, help reduce your chance of heart disease and lower your cholesterol levels”. This alone proves the need to include carbs in your diet because a healthy body leads to better life and longer life span.

3. It helps to retain good memory

According to a research on overweight women after a “low-carbohydrate” diet for a week where participants were instructed to remove carbohydrates from their diet to enable weightloss, it was discovered that they did worse on tests of working memory (i.e., why did I walk into this room?) and visuospatial memory (remembering locations on a map).

The low carb diet was based on American Dietetic Association guidelines, in a study from Tufts University.

This research has shown how carbohydrates can help one to retain good memory.

4. It helps to boost your mood

Research has also shown that carbohydrates promote the production of serotonin, a feel-good brain chemical. Most importantly, an absence of enough tryptophan and serotonin can easily lead to depression and difficulty to sleep. It is important to note that lack of sleep can hinder weightloss, so you need sufficient sleep for an effective weightloss journey

5. Carbs fill you up

Most times, we eat when we feel hungry. Carbohydrates act as a powerful appetite suppressant. They can be more filling than protein or fat. Carbs fill you up because they digest slowly than other types of foods, which triggers a feeling of fullness in both your brain and belly.

On a final note, moderation is key when it comes to diet, so, always go for healthier options of carbs.

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10 workable ways to stick to your meal plan everyday

stick to your meal plan everyday

You may find it quite difficult to stick to a meal plan due to your love for variety or the difficulty to change old habits of eating just anything you feel like eating.

Here are some tips to help you stick to that meal plan you took so much time to prepare. I know you do not want to see your efforts go to waste, so here I am providing you with workable strategies to eat healthy.

1. Identify the why

Why did you prepare a meal plan? Is it to eat healthy? To improve your cooking abilities, to lose weight or to reduce expense on food shopping? The reason will serve as a reminder and motivate you.

2. Get creative in your meal preparations

For you to stick to your meal plan, you have to be creative in meal preparation. Prepare your meal in an attractive way that will make you stick and not cheat. These are several healthy meals recipes to inspire you. Just ask Google.

3. Include food that you love in your meal plan

For any reason, you first have to have love what you eat. Adherence to your plan can be achieved when you include food that you enjoy eating. However, if you are trying to lose weight and the food you love is unhealthy, then you have to look for the healthy options that will help you achieve your goal.

4. Try to be accountable

Try as much as possible to be accountable to someone on how you stick to your meal schedule. So you need to make it a family affair. Involve your partner and kids in the type of food you eat. In addition, try to get a partner that share the same goal of conscious eating.

5. Plan ahead for cheat days

Festivities such as birthdays, anniversaries and private dinner with friends are good examples of cheat days. So, you need to plan ahead not to be caught unawares in terms of what to eat.

6. Don’t starve yourself

Try not to starve yourself in the name of sticking to a meal plan. If you notice that you get hungry a lot lately then you have to work on your portion and look into your meal components. Improve on the plan to prevent yourself from cheating or looking malnourished.

7. Don’t remove calories from your meal

Do not forget that calories produce energy and prevent you from starving. Removing calories from your meals will make you hungrier and weak, thus tempting you to eat unhealthy foods. To avoid this misery, consider eating sufficient calories of healthy and nourishing foods.

8. Carry a healthy snack

Sometimes sticking to your healthy meal plan can be quite difficult especially once you are outside your home. Therefore, you will need something to snack on to prevent you from going for unhealthy options. You can snack on healthy high-protein snacks or fruits. This will help keep your appetite in check until you’re able to have a full meal.

9. It takes time before you totally change your habit

Researchers have found that it takes about 66 days on average to make a new behavior a habit. Therefore don’t feel terrible if it feels difficult to drop your old habit and stick to your new healthier way of eating.

10. Make sure you figure out what works for you

Figure out what works for you and include it in your food options, just make sure it is healthy and not full of junks. This will prevent you from cheating.

So you are now aware of the above tips and you don’t even have a meal plan? No worries, download one from here for absolutely free of charge.

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Four tricks to eating out the healthy way

At times we get too busy too cook our own meals and we are forced to eat out. We may also be tempted to eat out due to laziness or cravings. It is simply inevitable to feel like indulging in some eating habits that do not go well our diet.

If you find yourself in this situation too often, the solution is finally here. Stop feeling guilty all the time, instead follow these tweaks to make sure you are eating out the healthy way.

Do you want to lose weight? Start here for free

Walk to the restaurant

Walking shortly before you eat (typically within thirty minutes to one hour), promotes your metabolism, reduces the amount of sugar that stores up in your blood after eating, and protects your blood vessels against fatty foods.

If you are eating out, choose a restaurant close to your location that you can walk down to, or park your car at a convenient space several metres away from the restaurant and stroll down the rest of the distance, if the whole distance of the restaurant is not trekkable.

Walking before a meal can help get your system ready to get rid of the high amount of carbohydrates, sugar or high protein from the junk or not too healthy food you are about to eat.

Eat moderately

Moderation will help you maintain a healthy diet and also save money. One way you can eat moderately is by eating only one serving. Do not be tempted to go for a second serving because the first one was too delicious or did not satisfy you.

In fact, you should divide your first serving into two, eat one part at the restaurant and take the other part with you to eat later. If you do this, you are giving your system enough time to get rid of the first set of junk you consumed.

Make a healthy choice

Eating out should not necessarily translate to going to eat junks or unhealthy foods. There are also healthy foods at the restaurants. You just need to order right or make healthy subsitutes.

How to make up your mind to lose weight

Healthy subsitutes include ordering for water instead of beverages or requesting for vegetables filling in your sandwich instead of beef.

Another trick is to carry your own substitute along, such as honey, instead of using the sugar at the café if you have to drink coffee. You could also order for appetisers that would fill and hold you till you are able to get home to prepare your own food.

Walk back to your location

After eating at the restaurant, do not jump into your car or into any relaxing position, instead, slowly walk back to your car. And if you actually walked from your location, then just stroll back.

Do not walk briskly, for this is not recommended after a meal. You should indulge in moderate physical activity after eating as it aids digestion, burns calories and gives you a good heart health.

Are you craving an eat-out? Indulge yourself but always remember that too much of everything is bad.

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Five ways to avoid unhealthy food cravings and stay fit

Unhealthy

Unusual and uncontrollable desire for unhealthy food can become a problem for your body. And the only way to avoid this problem is to mind how and what you eat daily.

‘Cravings are one of the biggest reasons why people have problems losing weight and keeping it off,’ licensed nutritionist Adda Bjarnadottir wrote online in her post ’11 ways to stop cravings for unhealthy foods and sugars’ on AuthorityNutrition.com.

There are various reasons why people have desire to eat food. Hunger is the only healthy reason and whole natural foods are the best things to eat to stay healthy and fit. But snacks and unhealthy foods are what people find available to eat most times.

Apart from hunger, emotional and physiological factors determine how people desire to eat. ‘Cravings are usually stimulated by emotional cues, but then fueled by physiological ones as we imagine what it will be like to eat the food we want to have,’ Brian Wansink, professor at Cornell University, says.

If you currently have unhealthy craving for food, these are some of the tips that would help you get back to normal and healthy craving:

Drink water

Sometimes when you feel hunger, it might just be your body telling you it is thirsty (or dehydrated). So you should not rush for food each time you feel hunger, try to drink plenty water instead and see what happens.

If after you drink water the hunger stops, then you might have actually been thirsty and not hungry.

Bjarnadottir also wrote that, ‘In middle-aged and older people, drinking water before meals can reduce appetite and help with weightloss.

Distance unhealthy cravings

Whenever you have unusual desire for food, try to ignore it and stay away.

The farther you take your mind away from it, the lesser you feel a desire for it, and the farther you keep food that you crave for away from your reach, the lesser the chance you would eat it.

Try doing anything that will distract you from desiring food and keep the food you crave out of reach. You could take a quick walk or a shower. Stop shopping for foods that encourage you to have unusual cravings, which are mostly snacks and sugars.

Eat protein

Protein may be useful. It can help reduce your appetite and stop you from overeating, especially when you eat plenty of it. It fills and satisfies you for a longer period.

Bjarnadottir wrote that study proved that increasing the amount of protein in your daily calories can reduce your unusual desire to eat significantly.

Plan your meals

Planning out your meal for the day or week and complying with the plan can help you control what and how you eat. With your meals more planned out, you can reduce the likelihood and urgency of having a desire to eat unhealthy foods.

Avoid extreme hunger

When you allow yourself to get extremely hungry for long, you are more likely to rush to eat any kind of food. To remain fit and healthy, the goal is to watch how and what you eat, but extreme hunger will make it very difficult to do that.

Eating more regularly and having healthy snacks close at hand is a good way to avoid getting extremely hungry, Bjarnadottir suggested.

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