Diet is the major part of any weight loss or fitness regime and can account for about four fifths of your achievements. You can help improve your diet by planning your meals for the coming week and eating more frequent, smaller meals, to spread your intake over the day.
The basics of any healthy diet are proteins, carbohydrates and fats. For healthy eating, your proteins should concentrate on poultry, such as chicken and turkey and fish, eg, tuna. Your carbohydrates should be healthy ones, such as salads and green vegetables, while your fats should come in limited quantities from almonds, flax seed and olive oil. Try your best to avoid processed foods and refined sugars.
You can increase your metabolic rate by increasing the number of meals you eat throughout the day up to maybe five or seven small meals. This works because every time you eat, you increase your metabolism, though you have to ensure you don’t increase the total number of calories you eat. If your normal (or desired) intake is 1800 calories daily and you want to eat 6 meals a day, then you could allow 350 calories each for your 3 main meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner (1050 calories) and 250 calories each for your 3 snacks (750 calories) at mid morning, mid afternoon and pre bedtime. These 6 meals total 1800 calories a day. You can change these around if necessary to account for a training session, but this will be covered in a later article.
I plan ahead for my meals for the working week, because then I have something ready to eat when I need it and I am not tempted to buy expensive fast-food from a nearby shop! The prepared food includes protein for my meals and snacks.
My chosen day is a Sunday and I will talk you through what I prepare for my working week. You must remember that portion size is important and also getting ample protein into your diet. Therefore, I prepare the meat portion of my meals. A fair portion size should fit into the palm of your hand. I generally work on the idea of one chicken fillet, one cup of lean mince or a palmful of steak per adult person, per meal. The reason I do not prepare my carbohydrates is because for lunches I will make up a salad in the morning and for dinners, I will cook frozen veg, which only takes 5 minutes.
Possible meal choices for the week might typically include two chicken, two fish and one steak dinner, plus lunches. The fish is frozen, so can easily be cooked on the day of use. I might cook 8 chicken fillets, 2 steaks and 6 hard boiled eggs. Half the chicken (4 fillets) goes in the freezer for one dinner and one lunch at the end of the week. The cooked steak and the other half of the cooked chicken fillets (4), plus the hard boiled eggs go in the fridge, assuming cooked meat is safe in the fridge for two or possibly three days. The chicken is used both for dinner and for lunch. The hard boiled eggs can be used for snacks or for breakfast.
This leaves just snacks to be prepared for the end of the week and it is easy to boil some more eggs on a Wednesday evening.
On a closing note, always remember, failing to plan is planning to fail. For more information on fitness and diet look at the WordPress Blog – My Fitness Tale
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