Losing weight does not need to be complicated. Just follow the 8 weight loss principles outlined below, and you’ll be on your way to a slimmer and healthier body.
1. Don’t make it more complicated that it needs to be. There is no need to prepare fancy recipes for losing weight, take pills, count your calories, or follow a complex meal plan. Just keep it simple, and this means basing your diet on fresh, raw plant foods – greens, fruits and vegetables, while limiting or eliminating everything else.
2. Make the salad your main dish: eat it first at lunch and dinner. Most of us have a tendency to eat more of whatever we eat first simply because we are hungry. The good news you can eat as much salad as you like – there is no need to control your portions. Since raw foods have high transit times, they fill you up and encourage weight loss. Just remember that a salad should include lots of greens and raw vegetables and fruits, if you like, with some lemon juice sprinkled on top. Potato salad or tuna salad, with lots of mayo and other stuff, don’t count. Successful, long-term weight control and health is linked to high consumption of raw greens, vegetables and fruits.
3. Blend your salad and drink it! If you find chopping and chewing all these greens and veggies exhausting or boring, just throw them into your blender with some juicy tomatoes, cucumbers, celery, add a little bit of water, if your blender cannot handle the job, and drink your salad instead. I recommend that you add some herbs – basil, cilantro, parsley, dill, and some sweetener – a little bit of honey, or some sweet fruit – to make your drinkable salad even more tasty.
4. Eat as much fruit as you like. Eating lots of fresh fruit is satisfying and filling, so eat as many fruits as you like with throughout the day. Although fruits have lots of sugar and high caloric content when compared to greens and veggies, they are very healthy and should not be avoided, even if you are trying to lose weight. They can be eaten as snacks or to replace unhealthy deserts. You can blend your fruits with greens, add some water, and you will have a delicious green smoothie that will satisfy your cravings for sweets and other unhealthy snacks.
5. Make sure you eat a variety of greens and veggies. There are a variety of foods that you can use to make vegetable salads, including lettuce (romaine, bib, Boston, red leaf, green ice, arugula, radicchio, endive, iceberg), celery, spinach, cucumbers, tomatoes, mushrooms, broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, onions, radishes, snow peas, carrots, beets, cabbage, and all kinds of sprouts. Even more vegetables can be eaten cooked – you can steam them or make into a delicious vegetable soup.
6. Eat limited amounts starchy vegetables and grains. To lose weight quickly, limit cooked, high-starch grains and vegetables to one cup per day. For simplicity, any vegetable that is not green should be considered to be a high-starch vegetable (except eggplant, peppers, onions, and mushrooms). Fill up on the raw vegetables and cooked green vegetables first. Starchy grains, refined starchy grains – such as bread, pasta, or white rice – should be even more restricted. If you decide to have some bread, a thin whole-wheat pita is a good choice for sandwiches. Limiting the portion size of rice, potato, and other cooked starchy vegetables to one serving is not necessary for everybody to start losing weight, only for those whose metabolism makes it difficult to lose weight. Most people can still achieve an ideal body weight by cutting our refined starches only, such as white bread and pasta.
7. Include beans or legumes in your meals to fill you up. Many say beans are a dieter’s best friend. That’s because beans have a high nutrient-per-calorie profile, digest slowly, and fill you up quickly. Some combinations you may consider are eggplant and beans, mushrooms and beans, greens and beans – these are all and all high-nutrient, high fiber, low calorie main dishes. Add some beans to your salad, or have some bean soup. Eating soup helps you lose weight reducing your appetite by filling your stomach.
8. Eliminate animal and diary products. For fastest weight loss, eliminate animal products entirely, or limit it to just a little lean fish, such as flounder or sole, once or twice a week, and an egg white omelet once a week.
Find out more information about how to lose weight quickly by reading my blog with lots of useful weight loss tips for anyone who wishes to reach their ideal weight, without compromising their health.
Filed under Nutrition by Eva Verda

