The Foods That Should Be Avoided in a Weight Loss Meal Plan

A weight loss meal plan should not just tell you what to eat, but should also advise what foods should be avoided. This way you understand what keeps you from losing weight. Many of our everyday foods hurt our efforts in losing those extra pounds. Let's explore these foods to see what they are.

Processed Foods

The prepackaged-processed foods, which are so convenient for us, can have ingredients that make it hard to lose weight eating. They can be too high in sugar, sodium or unhealthy fats. We must read the labels more before buying food. It has gotten too easy for us to feed ourselves with these unhealthy foods. It is best only to shop for food in the fresh food area of the store and avoid any processed foods period.

Simple or Refined Carbohydrates

You find the simple or refined carbohydrates in white rice, white potatoes, white bread, pasta not made with whole wheat, and other processed foods. These can raise blood sugar levels easier than complex carbohydrates. This leads to weight gain instead of weight loss. So avoid these foods as part of your weight loss meal plan.

High-Fat Foods.

High-fat foods are not good for you at all let alone when you are losing weight. These will just help to clog your arteries and cause you all sorts of health problems. Also they tend to help put on the pounds. There are lean cuts of meat, reduced-fat cheese and other dairy products that are much better for you. Just switch over to them.

Sugary or Artificially-Sweetened Drinks

These types of drinks should be eliminated as much as possible. For one thing both of them make you too used to having something sweet. They also can keep your body from burning the glycogen stored in the muscles for energy. The body signals for more fat to be converted to energy, when this glycogen is burned up. This helps you lose weight. Replace these drinks with water as much as possible.

Tea and Coffee

Caffeinated tea and coffee should be drunk in moderation when you are on a weight loss meal plan. Caffeine is an appetite stimulant and could make your hunger harder to control. Decaffeinated tea and coffee are fine to drink throughout the day, but remember that any tea can be a diuretic, so pay attention to your water intake too.

Desserts

Sugar-laden desserts are a no-no on a weight loss meal plan. Desserts can also be full of fat too. Use fruit for an after-meal treat instead. You will be able to drop more weight faster.

Follow the above suggestions for foods to avoid when working with a weight loss meal plan, and you will be very successful at losing those excess pounds. Giving up these foods is usually the hardest part of losing weight, but very necessary. It takes some time, patience and the right plan to accomplish serious weight loss successfully.


The author enjoys researching and writing on topics that are related to developing healthy eating habits and maintaining optimum nutrition. Additional information articles about developing a weight loss meal plan can be found at: Weight Loss Meal Plan [http://www.weight-loss-meal-planblog.org/weight-loss-meal-plan-2/three-keys-to-maintaining-weight-loss]

If you are really serious about your health and developing healthy eating habits visit: Weight Loss Meal Plan [http://www.weight-loss-meal-planblog.org]

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tony_Kopko

1200 Calorie Diet Menu and Meal Plan

A 1200 calorie diet is nutritionally adequate for most of the people for a healthy, safe and permanent weight loss. Starving your body with fewer calories will slow down your metabolism and consequently using up of the calories by the body will also get decreased. This will result in a tired and emaciated body and also the weight loss will not be as much as expected because the calories are still stacked up inside the body.

Following a daily diet of 1200 calories is shown to be nutrition rich to support a healthy body and also brings about the calorie deficit which eventually leads to weight loss. Of course, the actual calories that should be taken depends on a lot of factors such as age, gender, metabolic rate, body size and other medical conditions to name a few. 1200 calorie diet plan fits most of the people on average but it is necessary to confirm with a doctor or dietician before starting with the diet.

How to choose the best 1200 calorie diet menu?

The diet plan should be chosen in such a way that it strikes a proper balance of the macronutrients. The macronutrients include proteins, carbohydrates and fats. The calories that come from the macronutrients should be ideally distributed as follows: 15% of the calories should come from proteins, 55% of the calories should come from carbohydrates, 30% of the calories should come from fats and only less than 10% of the total calories should come from saturated forms of food.

When the diet plan is composed of healthy, nutritious and wholesome food it will keep your food cravings in check and you will feel full for longer. Moreover there will not be any compromise to your health when you follow a diet that satisfies all the above conditions. A diet is followed to make us healthy, supple, strong and slim. Any proper diet should work to achieve all of these. Therefore make sure that you take nutritious food whose calories add up to 1200 or so.

Sample 1200 diet plans:

Below are two diet plans whose total calorific value comes around 1200. From this you can get an idea of how to construct your diet.

Sample 1:

Breakfast

One whole wheat muffin with a spoon of peanut butter and half a banana.

Mid-Morning Snack

An apple and few almonds.

Lunch

2 slices of whole wheat bread; 2 oz. low sodium turkey breast; 1 oz. cheese; a lettuce, an orange, a tomato and a spoon of mustard.

Mid-afternoon snack

8 oz. low fat yoghurt

Dinner

3 oz. skinless grilled, baked or boiled chicken breast.

A cup of cooked broccoli and 2/3 of a cup of brown rice.

Snack

A cup of milk and two fat free fig cookies

Sample 2:

Breakfast

A hard boiled egg, 2 slices of whole wheat bread smeared thinly with butter and a large slice of watermelon.

Lunch

100gms of baked potato and baked beans and 100gms of reduce fat cottage cheese.

Snack

Muesli meal replacement bars.

Dinner

Pasta salad made with olive oil. Wash it down with tinned tuna in brine.

Typically any 1200 calorie diet plan can be broken down into the following proportions: The breakfast is the most important meal of the day and makes up 300 calories of the entire 1200 calories. The mid-morning snack adds up to 100 calories, lunch to 300 calories and the mid-afternoon snack to 50 calories. Finally the dinner contributes to 450 calories of the total. Any nutrition rich diet plan that follows this breakdown can achieve good results in terms of weight loss. Snacks can be taken at any time of the day where you feel the need to snack. But timing is important for breakfast. Make sure that you finish you breakfast within an hour of the time you woke up at. For the rest of the day, timing is up to you and you can divide the calories as you want among the meals, but make sure that the total calories don't exceed 1200.

Last but not least, wash down you meals with lots of water. Adequate amount of water is absolutely essential for maintaining the metabolism and for the healthy functioning of the body. Keeping your body well hydrated is an important factor that constitutes weight loss. Make it as a habit to drink at least eight glasses of water each day. It may look difficult at first, but once you start making conscious efforts it will no longer seem as hard as it was at first.

A word of caution:

Before you kick start on a diet, please catch up with your doctor or dietician and get expert advice on the meal plan that you have formulated. This is especially important for pregnant or breast feeding women. You don't want to follow some diet and weaken you body, so always ask for the doctor's opinions and then jump into your diet plan.


Free Weight Loss Books, Tools, Recipe Books, Meal Plans and Brand Name Products From Quality Health

Quality Health provides premium books, tools, meal plans and brand name products for free. You also get cookbooks, tonnes of recipes and other health information for free.

Click Here to Get your copy of weight loss books, meal plans and tools to reach your goal weight. Everything free.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jack_Kern