Staying in shape is difficult, especially in a time when we’re being told to stay indoors and comfort food can feel like the best emotional outlet we have. In fact, almost half of all Americans want to lose weight. Some weight loss tips have people eating boring protein bars or drinking bland shakes, but the real answer to reduce bloating is in maintaining a healthy diet.
The folks over @thefitnesschef_ on Instagram understand the struggle of losing weight and offer infographics to help readers quickly see how easy it can be to make healthy food swaps. These healthy eating tips explain how anyone can lose weight and keep it off without making huge sacrifices.
The solution isn’t to starve yourself or meticulously count every calorie. It’s in learning more about nutrition and what will fuel your body.
1. Don’t worry, your diet isn’t f*cked
At times, it is only when we see the physical value of something that we appreciate its meaning and worth. Examples can be found in finally getting a new car and realising it’s performance capabilities. Did it live up to the advert? Or, finally visiting the iconic holiday location to witness its beauty with your own eyes. Did it live up to the images you admired for years? A slightly less glamorous example can be found in appreciating physical values of food instead of being presumptive. In this example, the physical values of these foods are objective. Their worth does not change just because you like them, don’t like them or remain ambivalent. You don’t have to appreciate nutritional values of food if you don’t want to. But if there is a specific goal relating to body composition or nutrient intake, it seems wise. Within this information you can realise that ‘a nibble here’ and ‘a bite there’ (no raunchy jokes intended) can unknowingly accumulate to negatively impact a calorie controlled goal. And much to our surprise, that a ‘guilt laden snack here’ and ‘a disaster there’ may not accumulate to exceed required caloric requirements for the goal to succeed. Thus, liberating you from the toxic, and unnecessary feeling of failure. By removing presumption and including objective appreciation and realization, we can relate such information to the principles of our goal – in this instance, the balance of energy in vs out defining our composition over time. Too often, we let emotions shape what and how we eat, but emotions shouldn’t not be synonymous with eating food, unless they are positive. Understanding a little more about the food we eat can slowly but surely stop negativity creeping in to unnecessarily dictate our food choices, self esteem and food relationships. The dark cloud can be replaced with calm understandings of the food we eat and why it is relevant to our health and fitness goals. 🙏
2. Don’t believe every Netflix doc.
Rather than showing the body of evidence, viewers are subjected to frying pans cooking cigarettes – because according to WTH, eating one egg is ‘as bad’ as smoking 5 cigarettes. WTH claim that egg yolks contain ‘pure cholesterol which leads to plaque build up’. Yet the research actually shows ongoing nuance regarding dietary cholesterol and its relationship to blood cholesterol. Cigarettes are type 1 carcinogens according to the WHO. 1 million global deaths per year are the result of smoking cigarettes. Zero are the result of eating eggs. Aside from the rather amusing claims in my graphic, game changers documented vegan athletes achieving impressive results. While commendable, their suggestion that these occurred by excluding animal products can be swiftly discarded by remembering that Usain Bolt extravagantly consumed 100s of chicken nuggets during the Beijing Olympics – when he became the fastest man in history. A comparison with animal-based athletes would have been more objective, but probably wouldn’t have provided the bias results needed to increase revenue of the producer’s vegan food company. (Wink wink). High profile doctors also provided cringingly simplistic explanations of blood and erection samples centred around endothelial function and blood flow. They concluded that consuming meat “always impairs our ability to perform at our best”… whatever that truly means. Throughout both films, imagery constantly portrays animal produce as low quality fast food, yet there is no explanation of the nutritional differences between a piece of KFC fried chicken or fresh, omega enriched salmon. Eating more plants is a positive take-home for viewers. Even if it is achieved via biased manipulations of evidence and incomplete arguments. A complete discussion would probably conclude that plants are very important for health, but that animal products can be too. 🙏
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5. How to choose your treats wisely
Despite how well intended we are in sticking to our optimal nutritional protocols, assembling maximum enjoyment from our lives has to [without doubt] involve flexibility. And given that high summer is approaching for many, enjoying an ice cream/lolly whilst experiencing milder climates may further enrich our enjoyment of such times. Not least because, after a wretched 18 months we can now venture outdoors. If appreciation of energy values of these palatable delights is required, this graphic shows that an array of low calorie options can easily fit into most dietary intakes regularly with relative caloric insignificance. And those that happen to be calorie dense can be handled with moderate composure depending on total energy intake over time. Summer is here. The question is: which one will you be enjoying in the park as things gradually get back to normal? 🍡
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