19 Easy to Implement Nutrition Rules for Long Term Fat Loss

The problem with yo-yo dieting is that it can get your body into a metabolic coma. Many of the fad diets out there are based on very low calorie eating, or starvation – such as all you can consume for 3 days is lemon water with maple syrup or something crazy like that.

How can your body possibly lose weight when it is storing any fat that you do eat as a means to keep itself functioning? Because of these diets, your body thinks it’s starving.

So, instead of burning foods off as energy, it stores it as fat. You cannot possibly lose weight, because your body begins hoarding all of the fat instead of burning it off!

If you are giving your body the proper amount and types of foods, your metabolism, which is a significant process in losing weight, speeds up, and your body begins processing the food that you eat, burning some of it as energy to keep the body processes functioning and then burning the remaining off as fat, resulting in guaranteed weight loss!

Here is how you can do something about it:

1. Avoid Crash Diets

These diets are bad for your health and, as soon as you take a break, you can expect to gain what you’ve lost so far. A crash diet is not the answer to weight loss. It might possibly appear as though you have lost some pounds, however, as soon as you stop your crash diet everything will bounce back with a vengeance.

Try to have a look at it in this way. Do you really believe that any person can survive on a crash diet for his or her entire life? Most certainly not! Therefore, somewhere along the way you need to quit your crash diet, and at this point you will realize that crash diets cause far more harm than good in the long run.

Crash diets quite often promise a lot, yet hardly ever are these claims true.

2. Don’t Starve Yourself

If you are looking to lose fat, don’t make huge calorie cuts. Some people think the less we eat, the more weight we will lose. This will actually only lead to catastrophic results. When we don’t eat or eat less than 1,000 calories per day, your body will think you are in starvation mode and your metabolism will slow dramatically.

3. Alter Your Caloric Intake

This is another approach to outwit your body in order to lose continuously unwanted fat without having to lower your metabolism. Changing your caloric intake every three days or so in place of consuming the identical number of calories each day will keep up the starvation mechanism and proceed to lose fat.

4. Consider Eating More (Good) Fat

A sufficient intake of the good fats will help you build muscle, lose fat, and recover more quickly from your exercise sessions. Furthermore, eating good fats has numerous health benefits, such as improving your heart health.

Polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats are considered good fats. You’ll find polyunsaturated fats like Omega-3’s in fish and nuts (especially almonds). Olive oil, peanut butter, egg yolks as well as fish oil contains monounsaturated fats.

5. More Fruits, More Vegetables, More Fiber

Keeping your weight under control and losing fat can be made much easier by adding a steady stream of fruits and vegetables to your fat loss nutrition program. Fruits and (most) vegetables are high in water and fiber content and low in calories.

They all fill up your stomach, controlling your appetite at a lower level of calories. If you want to achieve good weight loss results, just have more veggies as well as fruits added to your diet, or what about eating an apple just before your meals.

Benefits of Fiber in Fat Loss and General Health
Improve your daily fiber intake. Always remember to add to your diet program as much veggies and fruits as possible. As previously pointed out, fruits plus almost all vegetables have a high content of fiber and water, but are lower in calories.

An increased fiber intake has many health benefits for you, both directly and indirectly (resulting from the loss of fat by using a high fiber nutrition program). Fiber is very important concerning intestinal activity like keeping you “regular.” Fiber will help remove cancer-causing substances from your body.

A high fiber nutrition program is of paramount importance to any kind of fat loss plan. Fiber will help you by creating a feeling of being full. Therefore, it’s much easier eating a smaller amount of calories. However, let us not forget, digesting high fiber foods means that a lot more calories are burned.

The truth is, simply by raising your fiber intake to 35 grams daily you can instantly burn up about an additional 250 calories. Despite the fact that 25-35 grams of fiber each day is recommended, most people in the USA have 14 grams of fiber or less daily.

Go crazy on the veggies
Concerning how to lose weight naturally, vegetables are your very best bet. Always prefer fresh veggies to canned or cooked vegetables. Whenever possible try to eat your fresh vegetables raw. The cooking process will reduce their vitamin content by almost fifty percent.

Also, canned vegetables are processed and can’t replace fresh vegetables. However, when you opt for the canned variety it’s recommended to check if the label says that it is pesticide free.

It is quite interesting that frozen vegetables can contain the same amount of nutrients as fresh ones, or even more. One reason could be the time it takes to transport vegetables from the farm to your shop or supermarket.

To retain most of those nutrients, be sure to steam cook your vegetables for as little time as necessary.

6. Always, Always, Always Eat Breakfast

There is no excuse! Without breakfast, your body will think it is starving, because it will have been hours since dinner the night before, and it will go into storing mode, where calories from food will be stored as fat instead of burnt as energy.

This does not mean you have to sit down for a full breakfast – grab a smoothie, a bowl of fruit, yogurt, etc. Something small and nutritious works just as well.

7. Eat the Majority of  Your Food Earlier in the Day

Contrary to what you have been taught to believe, you should eat your larger meals during the day and dinner should actually be much lighter than your earlier meals.

If you prefer to eat 3 meals per day instead of 5-6 small meals per day, you should always finish eating before 7-8 p.m. or 3-4 hours before bedtime. This allows your body the opportunity to process more calories when you are still up and moving around.

However, we have all, at one time or another, craved that midnight, or middle of the night snack. So, when this need does creep up on you, which it very well may, try opting for a low-calorie, easy digestible snack.

8. Eliminate Processed Foods

Try to eat only natural foods. Stay away from processed foods containing just lots of chemicals. Most likely you are putting something in your body which could be harmful to your health! I cannot stress this enough. Processed foods are mostly the cause for obesity and various other health issues like diabetes as well as fat gain.

9. Increase Your Protein

Boosting your protein intake will improve your metabolism, and it will help maintaining your muscle mass, which are the key ingredients in fat loss as well as keeping it off.

Specific food combinations can help to lose weight simply by accelerating your metabolism. Try to eat fiber rich carbohydrates. Digesting them will take more time, and, for longer periods of time, you’ll feel “fuller.”

Eat more fiber rich carbs and protein. Whenever you take in protein you will burn much more calories compared to digesting either carbohydrates or fats.

A research, publicized in the American Journal of Physiology, confirmed that consuming more protein helps to burn fat. Group one was given a diet high in protein (just over one gram per pound of body weight daily), and group two ate a protein diet almost equal to that of the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA).

Group one, consuming the protein rich diet, burned much more body fat in comparison with group two, eating protein close to equal to the RDA.

10. Drink Water, Water, and More Water

Yes, I am aware of this. We have all been told this one again and again. Yet, just how many of us actually drink sufficient water? Do your very best to drink at least 8 (8 fl. oz.) cups of water per day. Consumption of water is a critical part of any weight loss program.

First of all, our bodies are about 70% water. That should tell you something right there. And you all know that you can go much longer without food than you can without water.

Plenty of water is needed for your body to be able to maintain efficiently its daily functions. Additionally, water helps you to remove harmful toxins, and also prepares your body for fat loss.

In case your body is not getting sufficient water, it will do all it possibly can to store the water it already has. The problem with this is just how your body keeps the water.

The truth is, around 70 percent of your muscle consists of water. This will give your muscles that pumped, full look (together with glycogen).

But, whenever your body simply isn’t having a sufficient supply of water, that water is used for other things, leading to you being bloated. And strangely enough, the best way to remove that unwanted water surprisingly is to drink enough water.

This will relieve you of that extra water weight bloating you, and start to assist your body to function much more efficiently as well as priming it to begin losing body fat.

Studies show drinking 2 glasses of water before each meal will result in a 15.5-lb. weight loss over a 3-month period.

11. Have a Reward Day

Actually, I know that it is generally known as a cheat meal or cheat day. However, in my opinion that sounds just like if you’re doing something wrong. It is way too negative. Why not call it a reward day for everything you’re doing right.

First of all, providing yourself a reward day doesn’t suggest going so crazy sabotaging almost everything you have worked really hard to achieve. Whether or not it is a day, a meal, or even half a day, it’s your decision. You only understand what steps to take with this to keep you on the right track.

Solely you fully understand if you are better off having only a meal, mainly because a whole day will probably send you flying off the progress tracks, changing your reward day straight into a reward week. Eat what you would like but try to eat normally. Avoid stuffing yourself. Consume whatever you want until you’re full up and satisfied.

Even More Fiber on Treat Day – Consider taking a fiber supplement on treat day to add more fiber to your meal you may not be having through reward day foods.

12. Get Your Green Tea

Green tea contains a plant-based compound known as EGCG or Epigallocatechin Gallate, which accelerates the fat-burning process.

Many studies (for both, human as well as animal) have found that green tea is perfect for boosting your metabolism and burning your body fat.

One study (listed below) researched how green tea could possibly stimulate fat burning and thermogenesis. This particular research involved ten healthy men spending time periods of 24 hours inside a metabolic testing chamber.

Throughout these tests, the men were given either 1) 150 mg of caffeine, 2) green tea extract containing 150 mg of caffeine along with 270 mg of epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG – green tee’s key active ingredient), or 3) a placebo.

Exactly what were the outcomes? Between the caffeine and the placebo group no difference in thermogenesis could be established. The green tea extract raised 24 hour metabolism by 4 percent in comparison with the placebo group. In this case, that means around 80 calories daily.

But what can we learn from this concerning fat loss? This indicates that green tea can absolutely be taken as an support in your weight loss efforts. A 4 percent metabolism boost is great.

Besides the fact that green tea can be beneficial for your weight loss efforts, due to the way of promoting these products, people can easily have unrealistic high expectations about what can be achieved using these products.

Drinking green tea will let you burn an additional 80 calories per day if you have a daily resting metabolic rate of 2,000 calories. This may not be a lot, however, it does equal seven pounds over one year, which is seven pounds for doing practically nothing.

In case you consider a genuine fat loss aid such as green tea, have a realistic understanding of exactly what you can expect. And don’t forget, you will need to have set up a complete fat loss plan.

If perhaps you have been increasing weight and you’re having 100 more calories per day than you burn and you add green tea, guess what happens? You simply won’t lose weight; you will only reduce your weight gain.

Decide on an effective fat loss training program, consisting possibly of a weight training routine, high intensity cardio, and proper nutrition. Then, adding a quality supplement like green tea (or, even better, actual green tea) may help accelerate your fat loss efforts.

Also keep in mind, contrary to many weight loss supplements that do not actually work, drinking green tea has several health benefits apart from the fat loss aspect.

Green Tea Study – (Dulloo AG, Duret C Rohrer D, Girardier L, Mensi N, Fathi M, Chantre P, Vandermander J, Efficacy of a green tea extract rich in catechin polyphenols and caffeine in increasing 24-hour energy expenditure and fat oxidation in humans. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 1999 Dec; 70(6):1040-5)

13. Try Interval Training During Your Workout

The next time you do cardio workouts, boost your metabolism through interval training. To do so, kick up the intensity of your cardio by turning it into 30-second intervals of explosive bursts of intensity and then bringing it back to your normal speed afterward.

Interval training will make you consume much more energy, which will get your cells working overtime, which, in turn, means more energy burns! Interval training is so easy and fun! Let’s go over a quick example of interval training.

You’re are just beginning to work out on the treadmill after years of no exercise:

0-5 minutes
Begin walking at a speed of 2.5mph at a 0% incline for 5 minutes for your warmup.

5-25 minutes
Begin interval training and increase to a 3% incline and walk at 2.5mph for 2 minutes. Increase to a 7% incline and walk fast/jog at 3.5mph for 30 seconds. Decrease your incline back to 3% and your pace to 2.5mph for 2 minutes, then increase back to 7%/3.5mph for another 30 seconds. Repeat this pattern for a total of 20 minutes.

25-30 minutes
Cool down for 5 minutes, walking at a speed of 2.5mph at a 0% incline.

Cardiovascular exercise is very important and a perfect way to boost your metabolism. Here’s a tip: if you do your cardio in the morning, you will raise your metabolism all day!

14. Cut Back on Trans Fat

Trans fats wreak havoc on your body’s ability to burn fat. Trans fats attaches to the liver and fat cells, which slows and eventually cripples the metabolism.

15. Read Food Labels

You might be surprised when you discover the ingredients of certain food items, or the amount of calories found in a single portion (an entire bottle or a bag is NOT a serving).

16. Get Enough Sleep

Contrary to what you may believe, getting enough sleep actually plays a crucial factor in losing weight and boosting your metabolism. When you do not get enough sleep, your body will feel tired and crave energy. You will feel hungry even though you know you’re full. Lack of sleep can trigger bouts of binge or overeating.

Getting enough sleep on a regular basis is crucial to having your body perform optimally. Adults should attempt to get between 7-9 hours of sleep per night. Your body repairs itself and recovers from your workouts while you sleep.

17. Reduce the Stress in Your Life

The main stress hormone, referred to as cortisol, can destroy your body’s ability to burn fat. When you are stressed, you cortisol levels become high, resulting in a slowed metabolism.

When you feel yourself becoming stressed, try taking in a few deep breaths and imagine your body letting go of the stress with each exhale.

18. Don’t Go Shopping without a List

This really is important. There are actually two big reasons why you need to know exactly what you want to buy before going to the grocery store.

In case you don’t, you are going to find yourself making impulse buys of food you probably should not have at home. Certainly not if you would like to remain focused on your nutrition program and show off your sexy abs.

With a list, you can go straight to the food items you need to have, and therefore avoiding the many junk food areas any store will try to make you walk through, simply because these are the sections where high profit items are displayed.

19. Eat Before You Go

Never go food shopping on an empty stomach. You’ll end up buying a lot of things you wouldn’t buy otherwise.

Going food shopping when hungry is a great way to sabotage your health and fitness program.

Conclusion

These are just some of the simple rules that will allow you to speed up your metabolism to lose weight.

At first, it may seem like a lot to take in. But, if you go over it again, doing your own research and trying it out to see what will work best for you, you’ll find that you too are able to lose weight, reach your goals, and find ultimate success.

However, if you think you have a slowed metabolism or have always struggled losing weight, just consult your doctor first to rule out any other medical or thyroid issues.