Healthy Diet – How eat a healthy diet is an important step in achieving the desired weight. Of course, a healthy diet is different from a crash diet.
Crash diets may be faster ways to lose excess weight. However, strict diets can pose risks that endanger the health of the body. Therefore, instead of going on a strict diet, you should adopt a healthy diet.
As reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a healthy weight loss per week is around 0.5–1 kilogram.
How to lose weight quickly in an instant will almost certainly return excess weight later on.
Ways to Lose Weight
If you want to know what a healthy diet without side effects looks like, here are a few things you can do.
1. Provide Healthy Snacks
There are times when you feel like snacking. Instead of snacking on unhealthy snacks, provide healthy snacks during your daily activities. A healthy diet method that you can apply in your daily life is to always provide healthy snacks.
Eating healthy snacks is a way to maintain a healthy and safe diet and avoid consuming excessive salt and sugar.
A study from the International Journal of Obesity stated that people who store unhealthy food at home find it difficult to maintain or lose weight.
Some healthy snacks without added salt or sugar include fruits, homemade smoothies, or vegetable salads.
2. Reducing Sugar Consumption
Sugar may be quite difficult to avoid and can be found in almost all instant foods and drinks. However, by keeping your sugar intake from being excessive, it can be both a healthy diet and easy to do.
Fructose is a type of sugar that is commonly used in food and beverages.
According to the National Cancer Institute, men aged 19 years and older consume an average of more than 19 teaspoons of added sugar a day. Meanwhile, women have more than 14 teaspoons of added sugar a day.
3. Prioritize Drinking Water
How to eat a healthy diet that is simple to follow without exercise and provides enough water for the body to drink every day. Keeping the body hydrated can be accomplished by drinking at least 8 glasses of water per day.
In addition, water has no additional calories, so it is safe for consumption and can be an ideal safe diet tip. Instead of drinking sugary drinks, replace them with plain water, which will help reduce the total number of calories consumed each day.
Avoid sugary drinks such as juice, soda, coffee, and boba because, unknowingly, they all contain very high levels of sugar, but have no nutrients. If you occasionally want to drink something other than water, choose a drink without sugar.
4. Avoid Refined Carbohydrates
Eating whole grains can aid in weight loss and help protect the body from disease. To maintain a healthy diet and achieve ideal body weight, avoid refined carbohydrates.
Citing research from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition shows that refined carbohydrates may be more detrimental to the body’s metabolism than saturated fats.
Several types of refined or simple carbohydrates are foods, namely:
- White rice
- White bread
- White flour
- Candy
- Various types of cereals
- Added sugar
- Various types of pasta
5. Avoid Saturated Fat Foods
Fat is needed by the body, but first, understand which fat is good and which is not. There are two types of fat: saturated and unsaturated fat. Apart from refined carbohydrates, you should also avoid saturated fats as a way of having a healthy diet.
Eating too much-saturated fat will increase cholesterol in the blood, which can increase the risk of heart disease.
According to the National Health Service, men should not consume more than 30 grams of saturated fat a day, while women should consume 20 grams.
Some saturated fats to watch out for:
- The fat portion of the meat
- Sausage
- butter
- Cheese
- Cream
- Cake
- Biscuits
Choose unsaturated fats such as vegetable oil, fish oil, and avocados. If you want to eat meat, choose lean meat.
6. Eat Less Salt
Diet is very influential on the success of losing weight according to the target. The next healthy diet method that can be implemented is to reduce salt intake.
As previously mentioned, too much sugar and salt are harmful to our health and affect our weight. Eating too much salt can increase blood pressure, putting you at risk for heart disease and a stroke later in life.
You may not realize that there is hidden salt in the foods we eat, such as:
- Cereals
- Soup
- Bread
- Sauces such as chili sauce, soy sauce, and ketchup
The easiest way to reduce sugar and salt is to check the nutrition label on each package. Adults should not consume more than 6 grams or about 1 teaspoon of salt a day.
7. Avoid Eating in a Hurry
As a result of your busy daily activities, you may have a habit of eating quickly, even though this can affect your weight.
According to research published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, people who eat fast have a 115% chance of being obese compared to people who eat slowly. How much we eat and how full we feel are controlled by hormones.
This hormone will send a signal to the brain when we are hungry or full. However, it takes 20 minutes for the brain to get the signal. Eating more slowly allows the brain to process that we are full.
The research has also proven that eating slowly and chewing more will reduce the calories consumed. This will also help you lose weight.
8. Consume More Protein
The next healthy diet method that can be implemented is to increase the protein content of foods. Protein is the macronutrient that can fill us the most.
Launching The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, increasing protein consumption by 15-30% makes people consume fewer calories in a day, automatically we don’t eat as much food as usual.
Protein also helps increase muscle mass, so it can improve the body’s metabolism. Consumption of high-protein foods is one way to maintain a healthy diet that can increase calorie burning by 80–100 calories per day.
Good sources of protein are:
- Dairy products
- Fish
- Peanut butter
- Egg
- Nuts
- Lean meat
9. Use Healthy Cooking Methods
An effective, but often forgotten, way of maintaining a healthy diet is the way we cook. Instead of frying with lots of oil or deep frying, it’s better to choose a healthier cooking method.
You can grill, grill, sauté, or make soup. It’s okay to fry occasionally, but not too often. This is to prevent unwanted weight gain.
10. Adequate Sleep Quality
There is a link between obesity and a lack of quality sleep.
Quoting from the journal Obesity (Silver Spring, Md.), it is stated that getting sufficient quality sleep is a recommended part of a healthy diet. Researchers found that women who felt their sleep quality was poor were less likely to lose weight.
If you are sleep deprived, the levels of neurotransmitters in the body will be unbalanced. The feeling of hunger or the want to eat in the middle of the night, therefore, gets stronger. Therefore, obtaining enough sleep is crucial for weight loss.
11. Using Small Plates
It looks trivial, but this healthy diet method also pays attention to food portions, which is an important key to losing weight. Try using a smaller plate when you eat unhealthy foods, such as those high in fat and sugar.
The hope is that you will eat less of these foods. Instead, try serving healthy foods on larger plates to encourage you to spend more.
12. Don’t Skip Breakfast
One of the most important ways to have a healthy diet without exercise is not to skip breakfast. Your body will have the energy it needs for the day if you eat a balanced breakfast.
If you skip breakfast, you can have low energy to begin the day. As a result, having a snack during the day or night becomes more appealing.
The reason is, the brain will think the body is starving, so the portion of food may also increase. Always try to make breakfast with the nutrients your body needs, including protein and carbohydrates, for instance:
- Egg
- Toast with peanut butter
- Unsweetened plain yogurt with berries.
13. Avoid Snacking at Night
Many people frequently skip breakfast because they believe dinner to be more essential. That is wrong. Precisely you should have to increase the portion at breakfast because it serves as energy intake for the whole day, as well as lunch.
Lunch portions should be smaller than breakfast portions. It’s better not to eat at night. That’s because the activity at night is over, so you don’t need to eat heavy food anymore.
You can also replace the dinner menu with an apple. Or if you want to have dinner, don’t go to bed right away. At least wait about 2–3 hours after eating.
14. Eat More Fiber
Fiber foods turn out to have an important role in a healthy diet; why is that? The short explanation is that fiber-rich foods make you feel fuller for longer. Soluble fiber is one type of fiber that can gel when it comes into contact with water.
The gel from this fiber will increase the time it takes to absorb nutrients and slow digestion. That way, the stomach doesn’t empty quickly, so you feel full longer.
Various sources of soluble fiber can be found, including:
- Wheat cereal
- Vegetables
- Fruits
- Nuts
- Linseed
15. Enjoy the Process
Following a healthy diet for several weeks will not be enough if you want to successfully control your weight. The above-mentioned weight-loss techniques should be followed consistently.
After assessing what the challenges are, try to develop strategies sustainably to change your lifestyle to be healthy. After that, you can plan how to deal with these challenges.
You will most likely experience setbacks several times. Instead of giving up, start the next day more excitedly.
Never forget that maintaining a healthy lifestyle takes time. However, the outcomes will be worthwhile and worth the effort.
