My Nine Rules for the Healthy Diet

By: Mujuthaba

I have had a lot of people asking me, ‘why don’t I get any changes to my body even though I work-out?’ The answer to it is a follow-up on the diet. Joining a gym is not a way of getting into a healthy lifestyle. You have to have discipline at the dining table too. Avoiding the diet is one of the major mistakes exercisers do. Follow these simple nine rules and get back on the right track, see how things change after that.

1. Do not skip meals: Do not take two or one big meal daily. If you starve yourself a bunch of negative things happen. Firstly, if you starve, the body is ready to store more energy (fat) to cope with starvation. So the next time you start eating, the body tends to store more weight. Most people also tend to eat a huge meal after starving, which also helps gain weight. Secondly, you will be starved of a lot of basic vitamins and minerals that is needed by the body for normal daily functioning. Thirdly, less daily meals lowers the metabolic rate further.
2. Take six small meals daily: How about this, eat more meals. Six meals are supposed to be small meals. Avoid large meals. This amount of meals increases the metabolic rate rapidly. You need to be careful at the type of food you eat. Small six meals won’t make you hungry. You can start a meal as early as you like, but none late into the night. If you want to eat something at night, eat a fruit.
3. Low energy and low fat food: From now on, look closer at the food you eat. When you start buying food, look at the labels. Buy replacements for your normal food supply with the low fat products. When you choose low fat, take a look at the total energy/calorie on the label too. Buy the replacement with lowest energy/calorie count on the label. One thing you have to remember is that people make the mistake of avoiding fat, but not the total energy in foods. How much you avoid fat, and refuse to be careful about the total energy, there would be no weight-loss.
4. More Fruit and Vegetables: Awesome source of nutrients. Eat a colourful fruit or make a fruit mix with low fat natural yoghurt. Whenever you feel like eating something, make sure you have a fruit on hand instead of a piece of cake. Well, vegetables. Now comes the salads. You could make salads, with olive oil and replace the dressings with those new ‘lite’ dressings in the market.
5. Cut Down on Fast food: Avoid the deep fried fish and chips, burgers, fried short eats...etc. You can have fast food at least once a week. Make this a rule in your first dieting step. Excess fast food can be detrimental to your training results.
6. Careful on MSG: Have you heard of this before? MSG (Mono-Sodium-Glutamate) is used as a flavour in foods. This is actually used in laboratory tests to make normal lab rats obese or over-weight. If it makes lab rats obese in a short time, it’s going to have the same effect on humans too.
7. Hydrate yourself: By the time you feel thirst, your body would have already lost a litre of crucial fluid for body functioning. So, thirst is not a good indication of dehydration. It’s an indication of a body in desperation for fluid. A number of functions in the body would have been impaired by the time you feel thirst.
8. Take a Multi-vitamin: It is always very easy to get deprived of nutrients when you are on a weight-loss program. So professionals in this area recommends a multi-vitamin to be taken daily as the only supplement. So it is wise, and I would also recommed to use a multi-vitamin daily.
9. Swap Sugary drinks: Replace the soft-drinks with coffee, tea and fresh juice. Caffeine in coffee helps to mobilise the fat stores. Tea is really healthy and contains a number of anti-oxidants. One cup of tea has more anti-oxidants than a serving of broccoli or carrots. So why have a soft drink in a cafe’ or restaurant?

Let’s hope these simple guidelines keep you on the right track for weight-management.