Trying to Diet? Don’t Forget This in Your Food Plan
The Most Essential Ingredient for Reaching Your Weight Loss Goals
I am sure if you ever tried to lose weight, successfully or not, you know the struggle to maintain self-discipline, motivation and more. Your “friends” encourage you to eat “rabbit food” while they enjoy their big pieces of chocolate cake. They even try to “help” by warning you what you can no longer eat.
“You are not eating candy are you? You will never reach your goal,” says your “helpful” friend.
These words can discourage you because you cannot bear the thought of never eating again the pastries, candy and more that you enjoyed even though they led you into obesity and comorbidities.
If you are discouraged while trying to lose weight, it may be because you left out one ingredient essential to the success of every diet. Leave it out and you will eventually fail. What is it? Creativity.
Creativity is the staple to reaching our weight loss success. Without it, you will be overcome with discouragement over not eating what you did before or even not seeing results you wanted. This will turn into despair and demotivation.
Creativity is simple.
You need to create new desserts or try new foods and begin to enjoy your meals.
One way to ensure your diet is successful is to control your food choices. The best way to do that is to cook it yourself. Therefore, if you want to make sure your diet works and you do not know how to cook, it is time to learn. Cooking is easy. I am not talking about making chicken cordon bleu but I am talking about basic food preparation: steamed or boiled vegetables, potatoes, rice, starches and protein. Cook them on the stove or in an oven. Save the microwave for limited items.
There are plenty of meals you can prepare that involve all of these things, they are nutritious, easy to make and do not take a long time. Preparation is all part of the meal and makes it as enjoyable as what you will eat.
The first step is to not prevent yourself what you eat regularly, just consume less of it. You have to try something completely different and prepare old foods in new ways.
Let’s talk about salad.
What is it that your friends tell you? “Eat rabbit food: lettuce, tomato, cucumber with limited dressing.” That is your salad and if you eat that then you have your nutritious lunch albeit not too exciting.
Ok, let’s ignore that friend and be creative but still eat a salad.
10 grape tomatoes
1 Bell pepper
5 olives
3 almonds
1 mini cucumber
Dressing? 2 tablespoons of salsa.
106 calories.
You are still eating salad but you are eating a different kind that still does not have many calories. You will enjoy it and even looking forward to it at lunch or dinner or both. I eat one of these at lunch and one at dinner why? Because I must lose weight? Actually no, I love this salad. It is delicious. Does it work for a diet? Last year on October first I weighed 284 pounds, today I weight 191. Yes, it works. When I finish my diet will I stop eating this salad? No, because I eat it not to lose weight, I eat it to enjoy it, the losing weight part is an added benefit.
Versatile and delicious
La Banderita® CarbCounter are the best whole wheat tortillas in the world. They are versatile and delicious. I enjoy them so much that I buy six packages at once. They are only fifty calories each. Compare that with two slices of bread at about one hundred calories per slice. You are eating one quarter the calories.
I use them in place of bread at breakfast, for roll-ups at lunch and even dessert.
When I eat breakfast. I toast the tortilla up in a frying pan, no oil. This is while the poached egg is boiling in a separate pan. When they are both done, I place the egg on the tortilla and eat both with a knife and fork with my coffee. It is delicious especially with a little salt.
Utensils slow down my eating which is an important part of dieting. I eat alone so I have jazz music in the background or a morning radio program and my tablet beside me for reading Medium and to edit my latest article. Then I eat a piece of fruit covered with cinnamon: banana, pear, apple or whatever I want.
For lunch, I take 1 tablespoon of chunky peanut butter. I put it on a tortilla, throw cinnamon on it and roll it up. It is delicious.
This follows my above mentioned salad. I then cut up a piece of fruit into a bowl. 351 calories for that whole meal.
My dessert.
Take a tortilla, place it on a microwave safe plate. Cover it with sugar or some form of real sweetener. Do not use artificial anything. I actually use a tsp of Strawberry Nesquik®. That is 16 calories. I microwave it for 105 seconds and voila I have a huge, tasty cookie. It has less calories than one Oreo® and it is about five times the size. It is delicious.
Do you like maple syrup? If you look at the calorie count you will see that there are 240 calories in one quarter cup. That is enough to cover the stack of pancakes but alone is 17 percent of a 1400 calorie diet. So, no more maple syrup right? Wrong!!! A quarter cup is 240 calories but a tsp is only 17. It tastes delicious on fruit with cinnamon.
How about another idea:
¼ cup of almond milk
1 banana
1 tsp of maple syrup. This makes a delicious dessert for lunch or dinner. 137 calories
Instead of the banana try 1 cup of blueberries and save yourself 20 calories
Supper?
3 ounces of pork is delicious, the trick is to sprinkle spices on it before you put it in the oven. I work with Brazilians who really know how to cook meat. I found Grill Mates makes a great Brazilian Steak House seasoning. If you want, sprinkle a little salt also what Brazilians do. Cook in the oven until a meat thermometer reads 160 degrees, enjoy 2 carrots 1 Zucchini, a quarter onion and a tiny smidge of ginger boiled or steamed while the pork is cooking. Cook ¼ cup of dry rice and you have a delicious dinner. As the ingredients are cooking you can prepare and eat that salad I mentioned above.
If you are a vegan or a vegetarian, it is the spices that make the difference. So choose what will really make for a tasty meal.
You want to have steak but you are concerned about the calories. Try bison meat. The taste is virtually the same but with the fat content of chicken. I cooked the best steak I had in a long time and it tasted delicious. If I served it people would not know it was bison meat and not from a bull. As above I seasoned it with both Brazilian steak house spices and salt.
If you are a vegan or a vegetarian, it is the spices that make the difference. So choose what will really make for a tasty meal.
For desert how about that almond milk desert I mentioned above?
A great deterrent to diet success is to focus on what you cannot eat. Many diet experts tell us that is a guarantee that you will give up and they are right.
There is an old spiritual principle that if you deny yourself something with no plan to ever enjoy it again, there will come a time that you will eventually give in and then go binge on the food or tv show or game maybe for weeks or more. It does not work.
A little goes a long way
It is better to eat a little of something than plan to never eat what you like.
Therefore, do not forget the pièce de résistance.
What is the one thing your friends will tell you that you can never eat again? Candy, of course. 1 regular size treat can be between 230-250 calories or more each.
You can purchase miniatures with only 35-55 calories. They taste exactly the same as the large sized one but have far less calories. All your favorite candies come in these miniature sizes and the calorie count is roughly the same for all miniatures. They taste the same as the large version. Eat it like an after dinner mint. Keep them in the freezer to add an additional dimension to enjoying them.
There is no need to eat rabbit food when you are on a diet. You just need creativity and you will be successful because you will truly enjoy what you eat.
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