Being overweight has become such a common problem that we sometimes don’t even notice it. But we should, especially if we are one of those 65% of Americans who are overweight or worse, obese. Without realizing it the weight has crept up on us and now we are so far gone we get puffed out just climbing the stairs. We know the solution, but if you are like me you are spending as much as 12 hours a day working or commuting to and from work and the time available for preparing a good home-cooked meal for our families just isn’t there. It’s so easy to pick up some takeout on the way home and the cooking is done. We feel guilty about doing this (sometimes) but what’s the choice?
Is there any help out there for you? Can anyone help with easy diets that you can prepare almost as quickly as picking up takeout but is healthy, still tastes great and that the family will love? Definitely! Not only are there some great and easy diets to follow that will help you feed the family but they will help you lose weight, get fit and even save money. And it all starts with the internet. I can almost hear you groan at the idea of wading through millions of choices hoping to find one that works.
Fortunately there are websites where there are comparisons between various weight loss programs and diets and these save you so much time and effort. Remember the websites are owned and there is a commercial interest involved, but the people involved appreciate that if they try to deceive you there are a thousand other sites you can visit to their detriment and this keeps them honest. You still need to exercise some wisdom so here is how to separate the wheat from the chaff and find the good diets you and your family can follow.
1. If a diet is too weird, too complicated or too extreme, too expensive to maintain or to buy for – reject it.
2. Reject any weight loss program where you spend endless hours weighing food, keeping endless food diaries or spend endless time counting calories. I promise you won’t stick to them for very long if at all.
3. Look for moderation in the food plan. All the food groups should be balanced and represented.
4. Be very careful of any diet that promises the world. You pout your weight on pound by pound over a long period, so don’t expect to loswe it overnioght. Unrelalistic expectations offered by these diets will leave you disappointed and you will drop out. Reject them.
5. Read through the program and ask yourself if you could see yourself sticking to the diet ion the long term. Not just a couple of weeks but a couple of years. That is the reason variety in the food is so important. Too strict becomes too boring.
6. Try to imagine yourself being on this program for the next six to twelve months. Weight loss and diets are long term affairs, not one night stands and unless the food in the diet is interesting you won’t stick with it for very long.
Now let’s look at these point in order. If we consider the really complicated diets like the “food combining diets” you just about need a university degree to work out breakfast. As a result you end up obsessing over what to eat, how much to eat, how to prepare it etc. That much obsessing just means that food is always on your mind, not losing weight, getting fit, changing your lifestyle. Guess what happens when you obsess on food? You overeat. Which rather defeats the whole purpose, doesn’t it?
The other category I find a concern is the fad diet or extreme diet. Do you remember the Israeli Army Diet where you filled up on just one food each day. These diets lead to nutritional imbalances and poor health, just the opposite of your goal. Your diet must contain the correct balance of proteins, fats and carbohydrates to build health and give you long life. Unbalanced diets actually cause cravings for the foods you are leaving out and ultimately you end up overeating or binging to make up for them.
A good diet should stimulate your metabolism and create a long term weight loss. Once your optimum weight is reached a good diet should then maintain that weight. Your weekly weight loss should be steady and reasonably painless and it should be fat you are losing, not just fluid. Fad diets dehydrate you, good diets burn fat. Over the period of your weight loss your energy levels should increase, not decrease and you ability to exercise should grow, not diminish. Because the weight gain was slow and steady the weight loss should be slow and steady. Don’t ask for instant gratification because you will be disappointed and any weight loss will just be water and not fat.
So to answer the question at the beginning – “Are there any easy diets that I can use to lose weight, feed my family and keep them healthy and is as easy as junk food (and a whole lot cheaper) the answer is an emphatic YES! They are out there and they are pretty easy to find. And nothing beats the satisfaction of a healthy home prepared meal that is actually good for you.
