The
other day I was in line at a Taco Bell (yes - there are some decent
choices here!) and the woman in front of me asked the cashier if they
had anything "low carb" on the menu. She was rewarded with
a blank stare from the teenage cashier. I was tempted to tell her that
if she bought a burrito and removed the shell and scooped out the beans
and/or rice, she could have a nice high calorie, high fat pile of cheese,
fatty ground beef, and sour cream to eat as her low carb meal. This
is a perfect example of a key problem most people have with losing
weight:
they don't know what questions to ask and where to find the answers.
These
days, you need to be even more careful when you choose foods - there
are no quick answers. If you go with the idea that anything "low
carb" will help you shed those pounds, you won't lose weight -
this is a huge oversimplification that doesn't work. More importantly,
you will likely gain weight because when you cut out carbohydrates,
what's left to choose are foods high in fat (which has 2 1/2 times the
calories as a pure carbohydrate), or protein, which has an equal amount
of calories as carbohydrate, gram per gram. To lose weight, you may
need to cut back on carbohydrates - but if you're like most people,
you'll need to reduce fat and protein as well. Instead of simply cutting
out all carbohydrates (or reducing them to extremely low levels) you
should have a weight loss plan that gives you a specific amount of each
nutrient, with the right balance of nutrition and the right amount of
foods for your personal needs. And, to reach your weight goal successfully
you'll need to get answers to some key questions:
-
What's
the right amount of calories for me so that I can lose weight consistently?
-
How
do I figure out if I'm eating the right amount of food so that I
lose weight?
-
How
much and what kind of foods should I eat so that I have the energy
I need to stay active, motivated, and satisfied even while I'm on
a diet plan?
-
How
do I make the right eating choices in any situation so that I don't
have to follow any more restrictive diets and live like a normal person?
Once
I reach my weight goal, will I have a new way of eating that I can
live with and will help keep me at goal weight so that I don't
have
to go on another diet?
At
