To me there is nothing worse, nothing more tragic, nothing more disappointing than not being able to eat the food I love. Exaggeration....maybe? But even so, the life of a dieter is not an easy one and I've given into temptation several times. And then my diet is ruined, my plans for a healthier self are thrown in the trash and after a few months of gorging my favorite snacks, candies, fast foods, I decide to start from square one.
This time, however, I tried to devise a plan that would work for me and help transform my lifestyle, not just my physical appearance. I've been slowly (very slowly) expelling bad foods from my diet and after this weekend, plan on eradicating them altogether. My plan consists of these few things:
1) Cooking meals on the weekend to eat during the week
2) Research healthy recipes
3) Eating only veggies and fruits as snacks between meals
4) Eating consistently every day
The first "doctrine" of my plan is self explanatory. I used to do this on my previous diets and cooking large meals once a week and then eating them each day works for me. The second is quite easy as well, since I have a few websites I turn to for recipes with nutritional values and serving sizes documented. A few places I recommend are Pinterest (because it's practically a photo-site encyclopedia), Skinnytaste.com (which I may have mentioned prior) and Ziplist (which is linked to Skinnytaste). Skinnytaste recipes can be downloaded and then viewed on the Ziplist app, so you can save the recipes which interest you and look them up later on when you plan on making them. Also, Ziplist is great because plenty of other recipe sites use the app as well. You can browse through categories of recipes on Ziplist and save them to your personalized page. It will then show you what you need to buy at the grocery store for each recipe.
My snacks vary throughout the day and often I'm just shoving a protein bar down my throat or stuffing my face with low calorie chips, crackers, etc. First of all, I want to lessen my carb intake and believe that cutting out super carb snacks would do it. Second, I rarely eat veggies or fruits with my meals, so in order to get that nutrition, in a naturally low calorie food, it's great to cut up some peppers and eat them for a snack before lunch instead of 10 Ritz crackers and two cheese sticks (because I'm never satisfied with just crackers). And last, but not least, eating consistently everyday is a true struggle for me. Almost always I eat breakfast around the same time in the morning, but after that, who even knows! There are times when I don't eat until 3pm or 4pm. There are other times when I eat breakfast at 8:30am, then a snack at 10am then another snack at 11:30am, then lunch at 1pm, then another snack at 3pm and then dinner. Eating too often and eating barely anything are two extremes that I jump back and forth between unintentionally. I believe if I remain consistent and eat my snacks, lunch and dinner around the same time each day, my metabolism and body would very much appreciate it.
So, wish me luck! My advice to anyone trying to diet is that you should set yourself parameters, be strict about them and if you put in the effort, you will most definitely see a difference!
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