Best Food ChoicesHow To Eat Right Without StarvingTo lose weight you have to give some thought to your best food choices. So where do you start? Some things in life you can just give up. If they are bad for you, you can just give them up. 
You know --
booze,
cigarettes, the roulette wheel -- you can stop any of that today and live a long life. But hey -- you have to eat or you'll starve. So "cold turkey" won't work for weight loss. Even if you're overweight. Even if you binge. Even if you eat when you feel depressed. You can't stop eating. You've got to eat something. You can't just give up everything. So what do you do? How about a crash diet?Well, you could try to next closest thing to starving -- which is a super-low-calorie diet. You know -- the 1/2 grapefruit and two egg whites and that's-all-you-get diet. You lose some fat. And a lot of muscle. And you were trying to lose weight but keep the lean muscle. So you just yo-yo -- lose weight and gain it back. Crash diets don't work. You should never do a crash diet again. So what does work? Well, what you can do is to change what you eat. Make the best food choices. You can just shift it over to something that is a little better for you. You can't give up mama's corn breadIf you were raised on your mama's cornbread and black eyed peas, are you going to give that up? Turkey and stuffing on Thanksgiving? What about cherry pie? Home made. You're never going to eat that again? Of course you are. So what do you do? How do you adjust so you can eat the things that you like, the things that you are familiar with? To lower your body fat. So you can get to a weight where you feel good and look good. Can you cut back the portions?Well, the first obvious way is to cut back on the portions. You eat the cherry pie, but you don't eat the whole pie. You have a slice. You have the turkey, but you have one scoop of stuffing. You don't cover a whole platter and then go back for seconds. And thirds. You don't have to eat until you can't button your pants. You can eat a smaller portion and still enjoy yourself. But after you cut back the portions, then what do you do? A little less fatThe next easiest step is to adjust what you are eating. Some of what you eat is probably really bad for you. And that's not the best food choices. Let me tell you a little story. One time I was watching a family friend make a Southern breakfast. It was eggs and sausages and everything that went with it. And when she came to frying the eggs, well, she really fried those eggs. She heated up a frying pan and put in a couple nice big scoops of lard and got an inch of that good sizzling fat and she dumped in those eggs. They were floating in grease. Deep fried. And they were some good fried eggs. And they were just dripping with grease, and I could just feel my poor fat cells just sucking up all that grease. Anything you deep fry is pure calories -- pure calories means high calorie density -- and to lose weight you need
food that is high in nutrition density and low in calorie density.
An inch of lardOK. So you don't give up the eggs. But an inch of lard? How about using a touch of oil. Or cooking spray. Olive oil cooking spray will fry those eggs. A little oil will give them a bit of flavor and help them brown a bit. So don't cut out all the oil, just make sure that you are getting the good fats that you need. And you won't be eating half a cup of lard. You don't have to stop it -- just shift it over a littleHow about bread? You like the white bread? Wheat bread is better for you. You know those peaches in the thick syrup? Sure they taste good. But that syrup has a lot of calories. The fresh fruit is better. Tuna in oil? That should be tuna in water. Cheese is good. But do you need all that fat? The low fat cheese is good too. On your treat day you're going to have a little ice cream. Make it low fat ice cream. You can save about 1/3 of the calories. Movie theater popcorn? Pop your own at home. You can use an air popper or get the light microwave popcorn. Fried chicken? That's easy. Skinless broiled chicken breast. Fruit drinks? They are mostly sugar. Drink real fruit juice instead. Or better yet, raw fruit. Doughnuts? You should skip the sugary-breakfast-doughnut business all together. If you can't, then a small whole wheat muffin would be better. Doughnuts are just fat and sugar. Now, you do need carbs, but you need good carbs in your diet, not pure sugar. French fries. That's easy. Baked potato. Breakfast cereals are a nightmareHow about cereal? Most breakfast cereals, the kind you eat cold with milk, are awful. They're pure sugar. Don't think so? Read the label. They're the last thing you need in the morning. And the worst thing you can feed your kids. If you like breakfast cereal, at least get the whole grain kind. And skip the sugar coated cereals. The best breakfast cerealBy the way, do you know what the best breakfast cereal in the world is? It is called Hi-Low cereal. It is made by a company called Nutritious Living. It is usually found in health food stores. Most breakfast cereals have something like 6 times as much carbohydrate as they do protein. For example a cup of Cheerios has 3 grams of protein and 22 grams of carbohydrate. Kellogg's Raisin Bran has 5 grams of protein and 46 grams of carbohydrate. That's pure sugar. But Hi-Low cereal has 24 grams of protein and 26 grams of carbohydrate in one cup. That is a world of difference. It's true -- you need more protein to lose weight. And the time to start getting more protein is at breakfast. Not so greasy and not so sweetSo think about what you are eating. Make the best food choices. Instead of reaching for the greasiest, sugary foods -- the bad food combination that is guaranteed to make you fat -- take one step back. Find something that is closer to the way nature made it:
Will it take some adjustment? Sure. At first some of the things won't taste as good to you. Your cravings are not under control. Your taste buds are paralyzed by all the heavy fats and excess sugars. But as you get it under control you will find the natural flavors coming out in your best food choices. And you will find that foods are naturally sweet. You just don't notice anymore. It's time that you start treating yourself better. One part of that is giving your body something healthy to eat. Make the switch to healthier foods and you will win the game of losing weight.
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