Best foods for weight loss

If you're sacrificing snacks to cut calories, stop—to lose weight, you need snacks. "Snacking is an opportunity to fuel your body between meals," says nutritionist Rania Batayneh, author of The One Diet. Healthy snacks ensure you won't be ravenous come mealtime and keep your fat-burning metabolism revved up. Here are 18 nutritionist-approved choices for both store-bought and make-your-own snacks. Each nosh packs 150 to 200 calories, is filled with good-for-you nutrients, and will make you feel like your diet is about anything but deprivation. Snack suggestions provided by Batayneh, as well as Georgie Fear, RD, co-author of Racing Weight Cookbook: Lean, Light Recipes for Athletes, and Gayl Canfield, RD, Director of Nutrition at the Pritikin Longevity Center.

Snacks versus weight loss:

 

Americans love to snack almost as much as we want to lose weight. But according to recent research by the USDA, our snacking habits are adding too many calories and too few nutrients to our diets. It doesn't have to be this way, says Susan Bowerman, RD, assistant director of the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition. "When done right, (snacking) keeps your energy levelsup and gives you more opportunities to get in all your nutritional needs."

Working on weight loss? Then you probably want results -- fast.

Let me save you some time: skip the fad diets. Their results don't last. And you have healthier options you can start on -- today!

You can safely lose 3 or more pounds a week at home with a healthy diet and lots of exercise, says weight loss counselor Katherine Tallmadge, RD.

How to Lose Weight Fast

If you burn 500 more calories than you eat every day for a week, you should lose about 1-2 pounds.If you want to lose weight faster, you'll need to eat less and exercise more.

For instance, if you take in 1,050 to 1,200 calories a day, and exercise for one hour per day, you could lose 3-5 pounds in the first week, or more if you weigh more than 250 pounds. It's very important not to cut calories any further -- that's dangerous.Limiting salt and starches may also mean losing more weight at first -- but that's mostly fluids, not fat.

"When you reduce sodium and cut starches, you reduce fluids and fluid retention, which can result in up to 5 pounds of fluid loss when you get started," says Michael Dan singer, MD, of NBC's The Biggest Loser show.

Diets for Fast Weight Loss

Dan singer recommends eating a diet that minimizes starches, added sugars, and animal fat from meat and dairy foods. For rapid weight loss, he recommends focusing on fruits, veggies, egg whites, soy products, skinless poultry breasts, fish, shellfish, nonfat dairy foods, and 95% lean meat.

Here are more tips from Dawn Jackson Blatner, RD, and author of The Flexitarian Diet:

·        Eat vegetables to help you feel full.

·        Drink plenty of water.

·        Get tempting foods out of your home.Stay busy -- you don't want to eat just because you're bored. Eat only from a plate, while seated at a table. No grazing in front of the 'fridge.

·        Don't skip meals.

Keeping a food journal -- writing down everything you eat -- can also help you stay on track.

"Even if you write it down on a napkin and end up throwing it away, the act of writing it down is about being accountable to yourself and is a very effective tool for weight loss," says Bonnie Taub Dix, MA, RD, author of Read It Before You Eat It .Besides jotting down what you ate, and when, you might also want to note how you were feeling right before you ate it. Were you angry, sad, or bored? We often focus so much on foods and calories, but our emotions are a huge part of our eating habits.If you see a persistent pattern in your emotional eating, please consider talking to a counselor about it. They can be a big help in finding other ways to handle your feelings.

How to Lose Weight Fast: A Proven 3-Step Plan That Works

There are many ways to lose a lot of weight in a short amount of time. However, most of them require you to be hungry and unsatisfied. If you don’t have iron willpower, then hunger will cause you to give up on these plans quickly.

The 3-step plan outlined here will:

1. ·        Kill your appetite.
2. ·        Make you lose weight fast, without being hungry.
3. ·        Improve your health at the same time.

Step 1 – Eliminate Sugars and Starches

The most important part is to remove sugars and starches (crabs) from your diet.These are the foods that stimulate secretion of insulin the most. If you didn’t know already, insulin is the main fat storage hormone in the body.When insulin goes down, fat has an easier time getting out of the fat stores and the body starts burning fats instead of crabs. Another benefit of lowering insulin is that your kidneys shed excess sodium and water out of your body, which reduces bloat and unnecessary water weight (1, 2).It is not uncommon to lose up to 10 pounds (sometimes more) in the first week of eating this way; both body fat and water weight. This is a graph from a study comparing low-crab and low-fat diets in overweight/obese women (3).

The low-crab group is eating until fullness, while the low-fat group is calorie restricted and hungry.Cut the crabs, lower your insulin and you will start to eat less calories automatically and without hunger (4).