In order to start a diet plan where you lower the amount
of calories you eat each day, you need to know how
many calories your body burns just doing what you
normally do. After all, if you lower your caloric intake to a
level that is still above how many calories your body
burns, you will still not lose any weight.

To calculate how many calories your body burns on a
daily basis, there is a handy formula you should look into.
It’s known as the Harris-Benedict formula.

By using data about how old you are, your sex, your weight, and how
active you are each day, the formula can determine the
amount of calories you burn on an average day. This
number is known as your Basal Metabolic Rate and is the
most important number you can know when trying to
lose weight using a diet based on calorie counting.
While you could input the data into the formula yourself,
there are a couple of easier tools that you should check
out. The first is a chart that was designed by for the
MyPyramid.gov website sponsored by the US
government.

You can find the chart here:

http://www.mypyramid.gov/pyramid/discretionary_calori

es_amount_print.html . While it provides some good
data, it is rough and there are better options out there.
A better, more personalized, option in addition to the
above chart is a Basal Metabolic Rate calculator where
you enter in your own unique data. These calculators are
perfectly safe and easy to use. In about two or three
minutes, you’ll be well on your way to knowing exactly
how many calories your body burns on the average day.
Of all of the calorie calculators online, the best is one
provided at this website: http://www.stevenscreek.com/
goodies/calories.shtml . It gives a very precise
breakdown of how many calories you burn both during
activities and resting. Other good calorie calculators
include the one at the Mayo Clinic website
(http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/caloriecalculator/
NU00598) and one found on About.com’s
Calorie Count Plus website
(http://caloriecount.about.com/).

How Many Calories Do You Need Each Day Hide

Eat a minimum of three meals a day

eat a minimum of two snacks a day

Never wait more than three hours between meals
or snacks. Speacing of meals and snack very important

Never eat solely a carbohydrate and protin for a snack,
Protin is antagonistic to insulin.  It will keep your insulin
down, while stabilizing your blood suger levels.

Eat legumes a least once a day. They are filing, high in fiber
carbohydrate and protin and low on glycemic index. They are food that help you
stabilize your blood suger and lose weight.

vary your menu. keep your food selation intresting and satisfying by making new
selection every day.

Take your time to plan your menu until you are automatically familiar and confortable with your program

eat slowly.  It take twwnty minutes for your stomach to tell your brain that you are full.

Meal Planning Guidline Hide

Carbohydrates have been put into the spotlight ever since diets like the Atkin’s Diet and the South Beach Diet have recommended cutting carbohydrates out of your meals as much as possible. However, before you make an drastic decisions about what foods to include and not include, it is crucial to learn about carbohydrates and what they do for your body.

In short, carbohydrates can be good or bad for your body. It is necessary to eat enough good carbohydrates, because that is how our body has enough energy for low-intensity activities during the day. Carbohydrates are famously found in breads and grains, but actually they are also found in a number of other foods as well, such as fruits and vegetables. When keeping an eye on your intake of carbohydrates it is important to distinguish the good from the bad.

All carbohydrates are basically sugars. Complex carbohydrates are the good carbohydrates for your body. These strings of sugar are very difficult to break down and trap over nutrients like vitamins and minerals in the sugar strings. As they slowly break down, the other nutrients are also released into your body, and you can provide with fuel for a number of hours.

Bad carbohydrates, on the other hand, are simple sugars. Because their structure is not complex, it is easy to break down and holds little nutrients for your body other than the sugars from which it is made. Your body breaks down these carbohydrates rather quickly and what it cannot use is converted to fat and stored in the body. Staying away from simple carbohydrates is what most diets recommend, since they have little nutritional value when compared to complex carbohydrates.

More importantly than how carbohydrates work in the body and the difference between good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates is how you can actually eat these carbohydrates! First, eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. These foods include carbohydrates, but also a variety of other nutrients needed by your body. Another great tip is to cut the white bread and bread products out of your diet and replace then with whole wheat or 12-grain breads instead. Look at the packaging. Foods rich in fiber are probably a source of good carbohydrates.

Learning the difference between good and bad carbohydrates is very important if you wish to have a healthy diet. It is not good for your body to cut out carbohydrates completely—in fact, that is very difficult to do unless you only eat meat! Eating a healthy and balanced diet means including good carbohydrates into your meals.

No tags Hide

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard people say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. However, that doesn’t stop millions of Americans, and people around the world, from skipping breakfast or opting for only a drink of coffee. The truth is that breakfast really is the most important meal of the day, and you will have a much more healthy diet if you include breakfast in your daily life.

Breakfast is rightly named—break fast. When you sleep, you are not eating for 6 to 9 hours at least, and more if you haven’t eaten since dinner the night before. Therefore, breakfast is the first time you’ll be eating anything for a very long period of time. Some nutrients, like proteins, cannot be stored in the body and are therefore not present, so the body needs you to replenish the “low” levels of such nutrients. Breakfast is like the match that lights the fire. It truly is a very important source of energy for your body in the morning.

Eating breakfast in the morning also helps you avoid some illnesses and disease. For example, your sugar levels are probably out of whack from not eating for many hours, so having breakfast levels out the amount of sugars in your body, helping to prevent diabetes. Eating a healthy breakfast also helps you to provide food to your stomach so that you don’t overeat at lunch because you are so hungry. Overeating leads to obesity, which comes with a whole host of problems, including heart disease.

Healthy breakfast foods, like eggs, fruit, or bran cereal are also a good source of many of the vitamins and minerals a person needs during the day. If you don’t eat these things in the morning, it will be hard to make up for that loss later in the day. Remember that without the proper amounts of nutrients, you body will not function correctly. When you eat a healthy breakfast, it also makes you choose healthier foods during the rest of the day, so that you continue to get the proper nutrients needed for your body.

Setting aside 15 minutes in the morning to eat breakfast every day can truly make a great different in your diet. In the best case, your breakfast will include foods from at least three different food groups. For example, you can have whole grain toast (bread food group) with peanut butter (protein food group) and a banana (fruit food group). Top that off with a glass of milk to drink, and you’ve even hit a fourth food group. Breakfast does not have to include a heavy pancakes and sausage meal every day to be healthy, and even grabbing a single piece of fruit or a muffin is better than skipping the meal completely. Breakfast is important to your health!

No tags Hide

Healthy eating starts at birth, and that means that you should be sure that your infant is getting all of the nutrients he or she needs to grow properly. One of the largest debates in the health community is whether it is better to breast-feed or formula-feed your child, and there are many schools of though on this issue. Whatever you choose, remember that your child is too innocent to make good food choices. It is up to you to do that for him or her, and so learning about infant nutrition is very important.

Breast-feeding is by far the advantageous way to make sure your infant is getting all of the nutrients he or she needs. No matter how advanced formulas become, they are still not as good as the natural option, breast-feeding. When you breast-feed, you are allowing your baby to naturally build some of the same antibodies that you got from your mother. These antibodies fight things such as ear infections, meningitis, and other medical conditions. If you don’t breast-feed, your child will have to build these antibodies on his or her own. Breast milk can also help protect a baby from allergies, asthma, diabetes, and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

Breast milk is also free. When you have to purchase formula for your baby, you must invest in high-quality brands that will be as close to breast milk as possible. Breast milk is called by some the perfect food, because it has all of the great nutrients a child needs without additional foods. To get as close to this as possible, you may be spending thousands of dollars in formula every single year. It also helps to pay the bills because women who breastfeed have to take off less time from work to deal with a sick infant.

However, there are also disadvantages to breast-feeding. Of course, many women feel a bit uncomfortable with the breast-feeding process. Physically, this can be a bit demanding, especially when a child is teething or when your own hormones cause your breasts to be sore. For many, breast-feeding can also be uncomfortable in the sense that you must breast-feed at all times of day, which includes in public in some cases. Timing can also through a woman off. If your child is breast-fed, you’ll have to wake up many times during the night to allow your child to eat, especially during the first few months, instead of trading this time with daddy, who can prepare formula just as well as you can. The solution for many women is to get a breast pump, but these can be expensive and breast milk still cannot be stored for long periods of time.

Obviously there are both good and bad things about breast-feeding and formula. Your personal choices should be what are best for your baby. If you need help, a doctor can explain to you more about the advantages and disadvantages of both methods.

No tags Hide