Controlling weight is a process that involves healthy eating and regular exercise. It also ensures that you are getting enough nutrients.
Maintaining a healthy weight reduces your risk for health problems such as heart disease and high blood pressure. It can also help you find shapely clothing and feel more confident.
Eat Healthy Fats
Fat is an important nutrient that should make up 25 to 35 percent of your daily calories. Good fats help you feel full, aid in digestion and control appetite hormones. Healthy fats are unsaturated fats, such as those found in nuts and fish, rapeseed oil, olive oil and avocados. Avoid unhealthy fats like processed meats and fried foods, fatty cuts of meat, butter, lard, tallow and suet.
Eating healthy fats may help you maintain a healthy weight, reduce your risk of heart disease, diabetes and certain cancers, according to the American Institute for Cancer Research. However, it’s important to remember that all fats contain 9 calories per gram, so watch your portion sizes. Each serving of nuts, for example, contains about 160 calories. You also need to limit saturated and trans fats, such as those found in red meat, whole butter and lard.
Eat Smaller Portion Sizes
The size of your meals and snacks has a big impact on weight gain. Large portions can lead to overeating, which in turn leads to excess calorie intake that is stored as fat. Eating healthy portion sizes means that you can eat your favorite foods in moderation.
Smaller serving sizes are easy to achieve with a few simple changes in your diet. You can start by using smaller plates and bowls to naturally limit your portions. You can also use food labels to help you understand what a recommended serving size looks like for each type of food. Meal prep at home and taking half of a meal to go when eating out can also give you full control over your portion sizes.
A good rule of thumb is that protein portions should be the size of your palm, carbs should be the size of your clenched fist, and fats the size of your thumb. Drinking a glass of water before each meal can help to trigger your stomach to signal fullness.
Allow Yourself to Indulge
Indulging in certain foods from time to time can actually be helpful for a healthy diet. “Depriving yourself of foods you crave can cause you to overindulge later on or eat too much of those treats,” says Cording, adding that the best approach is to be able to indulge regularly, but in moderation. For example, if you’re craving chocolate or an ice cream cone, she suggests eating one small piece and sitting down to savor it so that you don’t just devour it quickly and end up feeling unsatisfied. Of course, this doesn’t apply to bodybuilders or other athletes who must eat very restrictively for performance reasons. This should not be a regular approach for the rest of us.
This article was originally published in “Fitness & Health” magazine.