Maintaining an overall healthy diet not only offers your body the energy and nutrition that it needs to function, but offers several health benefits as well. Most of us know that the biggest benefits of eating healthy are that we will stay physically fit, feel better, and have fewer illnesses. We can lower our risk of illnesses like heart disease and diabetes as well. Another key benefit of eating healthy is being able to maintain a healthy weight. In this age of epidemic obesity, this is one of the simplest weight loss plans.

These simple knowledge can help us generate our weight, (weight loss/weight gain) into a more appropriate and desirable weight of our body.

First things first, I wanted you to understand about CALORIES. Everything is about calories. The food you eat and that soda that you drink, everything contains CALORIES. Not just it, when you decided to exercises and exert some effort, what you burn are CALORIES. Infact, even if you don’t workout or exert any effort to do any exercise, your body actually burns hundreds and even thousands of calories each day on its own just functioning. You could sit still all day and your body would still burn calories.

That why we have to get our body’s “calorie maintenance level” (CML), It’s the number of calories required for the body to maintain its current weight. Your calorie maintenance level is your one way ticket in achieving your desired weight loss/weight gain program. Once you’re in, you’ll be able to control your weight with ease.

Every person’s body needs a certain number of calories each day in order for them to maintain their current weight. This is your maintenance level. If your diet plan is made up of the SAME number of calories as this maintenance level, your weight will stay the same. However, if your diet is made up of MORE calories than your maintenance level, you will GAIN weight. But… get this… if your diet is made up of LESS calories than your maintenance level… YOU WILL LOSE WEIGHT!

Here’s the method for getting the “pretty close estimate” of your calorie maintenance level. It requires putting your gender, weight, height, age and activity level. You can use calorie calculators which are available online:

http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm#

Ok, now that we know about the “calorie maintenance level”. We can now progress into creating our diet plans.

To do this, just subtract 500 from your calorie maintenance level for weight loss (vise versa for wt.gain)

For example, my CML is 2000 and I wanted to loss weight so I’m gonna subtract 500 making it 1500. It’s really as easy as it sounds. Just subtract 500 from your daily maintenance level and then start eating this new amount of calories each day. By doing so, you would officially be in a calorie deficit. And, as you know, a calorie deficit is what makes weight loss happen.  (vise versa for wt.gain)

You’re also going to want to try to eat 5-6 smaller meals per day (once every 2-3 hours) and spread those calories out evenly among them. It will help you increase the metabolic ate and will help keep you satisfied and less likely to eat something you shouldn’t. let’s now focus more on weight loss.

As important as calories, we have to know the food sources which comprises a calorie.

Let’s start off with Protein. it’s an important part of every diet. As far as food sources go, the best sources of protein tend to come from anything that used to be alive, or anything that came from something that used to be alive. Some high protein foods include:

chicken
fish
lean cuts of meat
turkey
eggs and egg whites
milk

Protein can also be found in all types of nuts, seeds and beans

As far as how much protein you should include in your weight loss diet plan per day, that depends on the person. For example, the average person who doesn’t exercise at all needs less protein than someone who does. Something in the range of 0.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight would be alright in this case. For example, if the person weighed 180lbs, you would do 180 x 0.5 = 90 grams of protein per day.

However, someone who does exercise should eat somewhere in the range of .6 – 1.0 grams of protein per pound of body weight. In this example a person weighing 180lbs would look to eat between 108 – 180 grams of protein per day.

The only other thing you need to know about protein is that 1 gram contains 4 calories. So, for example, if you were to eat 100 grams of protein per day, that would account for 400 calories. (100 x 4 = 400)

Fats- Despite any crazy ideas that have been put into your head, there are 2 different types of fat. Good fat (polyunsaturated and monounsaturated) and bad fat (saturated and trans). Bad fat can be found in all of the usual junk foods that you already know you shouldn’t eat. Good fat on the other hand can be found in foods like:

fish
nuts
olive oil
fish oil supplement

As for how much fat should be included in your weight loss diet plan… about 25% of your total calorie intake should come from fat.

To figure this out, the first thing you need to know is that 1 gram of fat contains 9 calories. So, if an example person figured out that their daily calorie intake should be 2500 total calories per day (again, just an example), they’d find that 25% of 2500 is 625 calories. They’d then divide 625 by 9 (because fat has 9 calories per gram) and get 69. Which means, this example person would eat about 69 grams of fat per day.

And of course, most (if not all) of this fat should come in the form of the “good” food sources listed above. Very little (if any) should come from the “bad” sources.

Carbs – Now that you know how much protein and fat your weight loss diet should include, it will be pretty easy to figure out how many carbs you should eat. Quite simply, the rest of your diet should be carbs. Once you factor protein and fat into your total calorie intake, whatever calories are left over to reach the number of calories you figured you need to eat per day… those calories should come from carbs.

1 gram of carbs contains 4 calories. So, for example, after factoring protein and fat into what you calculated your total calorie intake should be (500 below maintenance level, remember?), let’s say you are 1200 calories below that number. In this example you would need to eat 300g of carbs per day. (1200 ÷ 4 = 300)

And, just like fat, there is a good type of carbs you should eat (complex carbs), and a bad type of carbs you should try to limit to some degree (simple carbs). Some sources of “good” carbs are:

beans
brown rice
100% whole wheat bread
whole wheat pasta
sweet potatoes
oatmeal
fruits and vegetables

The bad type of carbs are found in typical snack/junk foods like crackers, pretzels, chips, cookies, etc. as well as white bread, white rice, white potatoes, pasta and any candy, drink or food containing sugar. While you should try to limit these “bad” carbs as much as possible and get most of your carb intake from foods on the “good” list, eating a baked potato or some pasta once in a while won’t kill you.

These are the basic things you need to know to track down your diet 😛

Following will be on how to continue loosing weight and some exercises to go on with it.

Cr.the loose weight diet plan