Help me eat well, please!

Cafe Society
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Make sure you’re not totally fat-phobic. Fat makes food more satisfying by adding flavor and being more filling. Things like 1% milk and low-fat yogurt aren’t much higher in calories than the nonfat kinds, but they taste a lot better. Just be careful that you don’t go overboard with fats and oils–a small amount can go a long way.

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Filling and low calorie? Here is some basic advice.

  1. Eat breakfast every day. A bowl of oatmeal or All-Bran is ideal. You want complex carbs relatively high in fibre. FIbre is filling. Processed foods tend to contain very little fibre.

  2. Eat healthy fats: olive oil, fish oil, canola oil, nuts in small quantities.

  3. Eat several meals a day. Every damn one of them has to contain some protein. Never eat a meal that just contains fat and/or carbohydrates.

  4. Check out John Berardi’s article in this months “Men’s Health” where he discusses the importance of WHEN to eat (and why chocolate milk is a great post-workout food… t-nation.com has lots of good advice).

  5. Lean meats are great! Eat more protein and feel more full. Lean ham, skinless chicken, turkey, very lean sausage, fish and canned fish – eat more of these, snack less on crap. Steak is good too – look for low fat cuts like sirloin tips.

  6. Eat more beans and vegetables. Chili is nature’s perfect food. Eat more soup (not cream or potato based).

  7. Don’t get hung up on ten pounds a month. Make sensible changes to your diet (many outlined by others above) and stick with them for years.

  8. Lower fat dairy, berries, greens, whole grains, eggs. Eat much less bread, noodle, white rice, cookies, crackers, candy, milk chocolate, baked goods, rice cakes, sugary cereal. Make sure salad dressings are low fat. Diet pop only. Artifical sweeteners in hot drinks. Many low fat foods substitute sugar for fat and have similar calorie counts; many low carb foods substitute fat and contain similar calories… learn to read labels and make sure a diet food is low calorie. If in doubt, avoid the processed food altogether. If the food has no nutritional information, avoid it altogether.