Diet and Weight Loss Programs Liverpool

Eat fat to lose fat

Not all fat is bad

We all know that we should keep saturated fats to a minimum but your body needs those essential fatty acids (EFA’s), namely omega 3, 6 and 9 (to a lesser extent). These essential fatty acids are the catalyst that your body needs to burn body fat.

Along with aiding fat loss, essential fatty acids are also good for your hair, skin, joints, organ function, keeping your heart healthy, digestion and hormone balance.

What to eat?

Good sources of essential fatty acids are oily fish such as salmon and tuna , seeds and nuts. Alternatively, you can look towards supplements. Cod Liver oil or Flaxseed oil for Omega 3. Evening Primrose or GLA (Borage oil) for Omega 6. Udo’s Choice oil is a complete blend of all 3 and would be my recommendation.

Warning when cooking!

If you heat a healthy monounsaturated fat like olive oil, you actually change its chemical structure. It becomes a Trans-Fatty Acid, which is essentially the same as a saturated fat. So, use oil very sparingly when cooking.

Eating a healthy breakfast to lose weight

Start the day as you mean to go on

When your mother told you that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, she knew this was true even though she likely didn't know why. Starting your day with a healthy breakfast is even more crucial if you are trying to lose weight. Eating a healthy breakfast reduces the cravings for unhealthy snacks, keeps your energy and blood sugar levels steady and more importantly it kickstarts your metabolism for the day.

When you start your morning with a balanced meal, you will actually be more likely to consume fewer overall calories that day. That's because you are eliminating two of the reasons that might make you snack – being hungry and cravings caused by low blood sugar. By eating a nutritious breakfast that includes complex carbohydrates and a good protein source, your blood sugar levels will be maintained on a steady basis throughout the morning. You won't feel hunger pangs that drive you to grab the first food you see (often a high calorie, high fat junk food item). The complex carbohydrates take longer to digest and continue to provide energy for several hours.

Increase your metabolic rate

Without breakfast, your metabolism will not kick in. Your metabolism slows naturally when you go more than a few hours without eating. An empty digestive tract tells your body that you are starving and your metabolism automatically slows to conserve energy. That means that it will burn the fewest possible calories to get by on. It also means that the few calories being burned by just breathing and being awake will not be fat calories. This is because your fat is stored energy for the body. When your body is in what it sees as survival mode, it will not burn the stored fat until other tissues have been damaged.

Your metabolism doesn't even begin to kick in until you eat for the first time each day. By skipping breakfast, you won't begin to really burn very many calories until whatever time you find yourself eating. However, by starting off with a good breakfast within an hour of rising, you will wake your metabolism up and burn more calories for the entire day. Part of that is due to something known as diet-induced thermogenesis. Thermogenesis is the scientific term for heat production in biological organisms.

Eat more to lose more

Diet-induced thermogenesis describes the burning of calories by the body during all the aspects of digesting food. Calories are burned by the act of eating and by your body's digesting of the food. Your body burns even more calories while it absorbs, metabolizes and stores the nutrients derived from the food. This is one of the reasons that most nutritionists will tell you to eat six small meals throughout the day rather than three larger ones. The body will almost constantly be in a state of diet-induced thermogenesis.

Now you can understand why it is essential to start each day with a healthy, nutritious breakfast in...

Keeping a food diary will help you lose weight

What is a food diary and how will it help me?

We usually recommend people who are struggling to manage their weight to keep a food diary. But what is a food diary and how does it help you lose weight? A food diary is a record that you should carry with you at all times to record within it every single thing that you consume in a day-both food and drink. Your food diary could be a small notebook, or a log on your iPhone or similar hand held device.

The primary purpose of your food diary is to show you what you are really eating. Frequently we forget what we have eaten, or may subconsciously put items out of our mind. For a food diary to be effective, you must make sure you're honest and record every single thing you eat or drink in your food diary at the time that it is consumed. Otherwise, the under reporting of calories in your food diary will lead you to believe you are eating less and encourage the temptation to eat more. This in fact, may happen in up to 50% of cases.

Record the types of food in your food diary that you are eating, and importantly, the portion sizes. You should also record what was happening at the time you ate the item. Were you watching TV? Were you feeling worried, or depressed? How did you feel after you were finished eating? What were your energy levels like? This should all go in your food diary.

Providing an accurate record of your eating patterns

Patterns may emerge in your food diary, that show when you are most likely to snack. In the case of TV watching you may be able to modify your behaviour so as to avoid the times when you have a higher risk of snacking.

Overeating can lead to further destructive behaviour. A person may feel guilty for eating a particularly indulgent item and these guilt feelings may increase the depression regarding their weight. It becomes a cycle of eating leading to guilt, leading to more eating for comfort. A food diary may help you identify such patterns and help you stop the cycle.

Your food diary can help you to see that foods that you are eating are not nutritionally the best that you could be eating. That your calories could be better spent on healthier foods that may leave you feeling fuller for longer, than perhaps that bar of chocolate that you would normally reach for.

Motivation for your healthier eating regime can be garnered by seeing just how badly you have been eating. Once you see that it is the fault of your diet and not some other, unseen factor that is making you gain weight then finally you can see that change is within your own control, and so begin to work towards change.

You may choose to add in daily calorie goals to your diary. As your daily food is consumed you take the calorie value away from your daily allowance, allowing you to clearly see how much you have available to you. A food diary can be a great help to those who are willing to use it correctly, but this can only happen if you are ...