It is not at all uncommon to meet a person who cannot understand why they are unable to lose weight, and curses the fact that although they are eating all the right things, their weight hangs around the “few pounds overweight” barrier. They will tell you all of this and wonder what they are doing wrong, and in the next few moments will take a gulp from a can of soda, a glass of beer or something similar, and admit on questioning that it is their third of the day or night. Now, it is far from impossible to maintain a healthy diet while continuing to enjoy the occasional glass of wine or can of soda. Neither is it unthinkable to stop drinking these things entirely, but it is not compulsory. However, it is important to realize that issues with weight gain or weight loss can often be down to what you drink as much as what you eat. You will not be at a healthy weight if you drink a bottle of wine a day, or get through a family-sized bottle of soda. If you have to have a drink with food, then often a glass of water will be the best option. There are more reasons for this than just the weight issue. A glass of water will keep you from getting thirsty and will help you enjoy the meal, but will not interfere with the taste. And if you are thirsty, a glass of water is the best thing you can drink – it replenishes the body's hydration levels and allows you to enjoy the occasional glass of wine or soda more, because you get to really savor the taste. When people embark upon a diet, they are often given to mention that the big test for them will be how much they miss a certain food. For a diet to be effective it needs to be stuck to – often to the extent that people who have lost weight on a diet put it all back on in weeks once they revert to their old ways. So it can be hard to stick to a diet if you tell yourself that it's over between you and your favorite chocolate bar, or that you can never again eat cheese. If a crash diet is required for health reasons, it must be stuck to. But if you simply want to lose weight and keep it off for your own reasons, the best way of sticking to a diet may be to allow yourself to relax it at certain points. If you eat chocolate every day, and often several times a day, then you're not going to lose weight. But only a diet fascist will say that the occasional bar as a treat is off limits. This is not to say that you can carry on eating chocolate as regularly as you wish, or having fried food every few days. For a diet to mean anything, the healthy options have to be the norm. However, a small treat once or twice a week as a reward for sticking to the diet is not going to be the end of the world – and it can enable you to keep to that diet indefinitely, aiding you to lose weight in the long run, which is what you want. There has for some time been an impression that healthy food is tasteless, boring and even off-putting. We all know that a salad is better for us than a hamburger, but we go for the burger because it has more taste – or so goes the theory, anyway. But there is no reason that this needs to be the case. With the addition of a little spice, any food can become more interesting. There will always be people keen to point out that, although a grilled chicken breast may contain fewer calories than a family bucket from a fried chicken outlet, it doesn't taste as good. And while this is a matter of opinion, the fact of the matter is that perceptions matter. If you marinade that chicken breast with herbs and spices, though, the taste can change considerably, and be a lot more fun. You may get bored with eating tuna salad in your sandwiches, even though tuna is far from tasteless. But if you add a little spice when you make the tuna mix you will find that there are a range of different tastes that add very little if anything in the way of calories. Paprika, pepper, cayenne... the list goes on. The addition of some chopped jalapenos can make it even more interesting, if you have the stomach for them. And these days, the bottles of sauce on the supermarket shelves goes beyond steak sauce and ketchup – additions like piri-piri and teriyaki are a welcome break from the norm. |
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March 2018
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