It's 2018, y'all! I know people sometimes get annoyed about the prospect of creating resolutions, but honestly I think they're important. Who doesn't want to improve themselves and try to become a better person year after year?
I've lately been looking at how to shed around 10-15 pounds, and I've been wanting to do this for a long time. I think what people's issue is on losing weight is that they want to set up a huge goal, let's say, losing 30 pounds. Well, when the week is over and you weigh yourself on that scale, sometimes the number goes up (gain of muscle, or perhaps just not eating right). It's easier to deal with that slight increase when you're mind is set on just losing around 10 pounds, rather than 30. Slow and steady gets you their faster, I should say.
Because of that, I believe everyone wishing to lose some weight should try out just losing one pound per week, for a few weeks, and then when you feel ready move on up to 1.5 pounds per week and so forth. You can't just jump in the deep end of the pool and expect to float.
In this post, I'm not necessarily going to be talking about foods and workouts you should do to lose weight. I feel like anyone can find those things anywhere, but I do come across a lack of articles that have pretty much all of your dietary questions / answers all condensed into one and educates you about what your diet should actually be like.
To lose one pound per week, you must have a calorie deficit of 3500 calories per week. That comes to 500 calories per day, which means you can either take off 500 calories from your diet, split the 500 with diet and exercise, or try to lose that 500 with just exercise (I recommend the split, 250-250).
STEP 1: CALORIES
To calculate how many calories you typically eat per day, check out this website:
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/how-many-calories-per-day
Depending on the amount of calories you eat, subtract how many calories you want to vanquish from your diet. If you scroll towards the bottom, they also share a few cool tips on how to reach your goal faster.
STEP 2: FAT
Now, let's talk about fat. Heck, how do you even cut out fat from your diet? It's in about everything, but selection is key. You need to find the healthy fats such as avocado, walnuts, chia seeds, sunflower seeds, etc. Incorporating these fats are essential to your diet, so make sure you don't go on a full-on, fat-free diet!
For the calculations on how to track dietary fat, look below.
To do this, you must find the amount of calories you should eat per day to reach your goal (see step 1).
Once you have that, you just multiply that amount by 0.20, keeping account of that, and then multiplying the calories by 0.35.
The products are the range of total fat you should eat per day, and to get that amount into grams you just divide the numbers by 9 (there are 9 calories in one gram of fat)!
For saturated fat, you should have less than 10 percent of the calories you eat per day. So say you eat 1600 calories to reach your goal: simply multiply by 0.10 to get how many calories of saturated fat that is, and divide by 9 if you wish it to be in grams.
STEP 3: PROTEIN
The MINIMUM amount of protein you need to be healthy is 0.36 grams per pound (or 0.8 grams per kilogram). So, simply multiply your weight by the relative numbers to get the least amount of protein required to be healthy.
HOWEVER, if you want to get the most protein and/or are very active, double it.
ALSO, in this case, we are trying to lose weight. Since protein takes longer to digest than carbs, it makes you feel full for longer periods of time and thus causes you to eat less and resist bad cravings. To naturally eat less and aid in losing weight, have protein come to around 30% of your daily calories.
STEP 4: SODIUM INTAKE
You should not eat more than 1500 mg of sodium per day. Simple, right? Well, not so much.
An average American consumes more than 3400 mg of sodium per day.
If you want to be healthy and get on the right track for weight loss, and if you're one of the people who consistently eat a whole lot of sodium per day, the beginning of your weight loss journey should not be to cut out sodium completely from your diet (because we need around 500 mg a day to function properly), but to practice limiting yourself to only eating maximum 1500 mg a day for a few weeks.
To lose weight, you must get into habits. Get into a habit stay away from unprocessed foods when you're at the grocery store. Don't eat doritos. Limit your sugary drinking and alcoholic beverages, and try to cut them out completely (EXCEPT WATER OFC). Understand where you want to be, and your best bet on getting there. Know that life goes on, but that great feeling you get after you eat another oreo goes away, but the consequences don't unless you try to make your life more healthy and better.