There are better ways to losing weight consistently than doing a short-term diet. Some short-term diets require you to do an 180-degree shift from your current eating habits. This is a huge change for our bodies to take on and the majority of us fail.
If you feel like a more gradual and consistent approach to weight loss and health than this second option is best. The second option is to start becoming more aware of what you are eating by counting your macronutrients.
You have seen plenty of articles promoting and listing the benefits of a macronutrient diet. But do you know what is involved and how to create a macronutrient meal plan? One of the best ways to become more aware of what you are eating is by tracking the macronutrients. This will also show you what your food is made of. Your macronutrients monitor your intake of proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and calories.
There are four steps to follow that will help you measure and track your macronutrients.
Step 1 Measure
The first step to starting a macronutrient diet is measuring. Technology has made it easier than before to track and measure your calories and macronutrients. You no longer need to do the math in your head, buy a food scale or a calorie/gram counting book. Instead, you can use apps (kudolife.com) to track and count your macronutrients for you. Unless you are a master at math, and your brain can add, subtract and divide numbers faster than a calculator, as well as doubles up as a resource for nutritional information, you'll need to download a health and fitness app.
Step 2: Forming The Right Habits
For men and women at risk of diabetes and need to lose weight fast, then a 30-40-30 macronutrient diet would be best to follow. A 30-40-30 macronutrient diet means your daily meals add up to be 30% carbs, 40% protein, and 30% fat. This diet will help you lose weight consistently. It is also sustainable for the long run.
A macronutrient diet is the best diet you could start. It will leave you feeling energized with minimum food cravings and no hunger. Other diets are not as sustainable and are hard to follow. This is because you are forced to give up the foods you love and completely change the way you eat overnight. The macronutrient diet still allows you to eat the foods you crave, but in smaller portions. If you continue to deny yourself the foods you love than you could find yourself relapsing and going back to your old eating habits.
By following a macronutrient diet, you will be able to develop new healthy habits slowly and successfully. This is because a macronutrient diet still allows you eat the food you're used to- just in moderation. A macronutrient diet allows your body to burn fat without the fear of starvation. It has just enough carbs to keep your brain happy and not too many where you'll store fat.
Step 3: Preparing Your Grocery List And Plan Ahead
This step is the most important component to successfully follow your macronutrient diet. Devoting a few hours at the beginning of the week to plan your macronutrient diet and what food you plan on eating will help you lose weight and form healthier habits.
You will first want to decide how many meals you want to have each day. You can have a giant feast for breakfast followed by three snacks during the day. Or a medium breakfast and dinner with a small snack in the middle. The amount and types of meals you eat each day are up to you. All you need to do is keep them balanced.
In general, you should have 20g to 25g of protein in each meal. For carbs, it is recommended you leave them for the last meal, or you mix and match them with your protein intake. For fats, if you already planned to have a particular meal, then measuring your intake of fats is simple. For example, bacon and hardboiled eggs are both sources of protein and fat. They will complement a grilled chicken over a bed of lettuce. Or you can have dressing on the side with your salad. You can also alternatively have nut butter for dessert and avocados as a topping. The list is endless.
Step 4: Be Flexible
What if your boss invited you out for dinner? Or it's a friends birthday, and there is some delicious cake handed out to everyone. Or, what if you just don't feel like eating chicken and rice for dinner as you had originally planned?
These are all valid questions. A macronutrient diet will still allow you to go out to dinner with your boss, eat birthday cake, and spontaneously change a meal. This is because most of the foods you eat can be easily categorized into one of the macronutrient groups. To do this, you need to swap out a substitute of the same macronutrient and match the total number of calories to determine how much of the new food you get.
For example, you had 100g of chicken breast planned out for lunch, but at 12 o'clock you're invited out to a mandatory business lunch at a seafood restaurant. No problem. Kudolife will help you maintain your macronutrient diet. By checking Kudolife's meal database, you'll see that 100g of chicken is worth 165 calories, which is equivalent to cod. When you order your cod, you can politely ask that it be grilled with no oils and no butter. Don't worry about not having the same number of carbs and fats in the cod as in the chicken -- you will be close enough. It is that simple.
A macronutrient diet may seem overwhelming at first. But once you get over the learning curve, it will become second nature. To get you started here are a few recipe videos that are perfectly macronutrient balanced.
Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook
ALSO ON HUFFPOST: