Nutritious diet and weight loss method

Nutritional diet weight loss is currently clinically recognized as the method of weight loss with the highest long-term benefits and the least burden on the body. The core logic is not to diet and starve, but to create a healthy calorie gap of 300-500 calories on the premise of meeting daily basal metabolic needs and ensuring adequate intake of protein, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients. There is no need to completely quit high-sugar foods or force a lot of exercise. According to follow-up data released by "The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology" in 2023, the six-month compliance rate of people who use this method to lose weight reaches 78%. To put it bluntly, 8 out of 10 people can persist for half a year, and the rebound rate one year after weight loss is 62% lower than that of the extreme dieting group.

Damn, I have been a dietary guide for almost 4 years, and I have seen too many people misunderstand this method. They either think that they are eating boiled chicken breasts and broccoli every day, and their faces turn green without losing a few pounds. Or they think that they have to use a food scale to find the calories in every bite. When they go out to have hot pot with friends, they have to pull out the app to check it for a long time. In the end, they develop eating anxiety before losing weight. This is not necessary.

In fact, there is no unified standard answer to the current mainstream nutritional diet for weight loss, and the ideas of different schools are quite different. For example, the low-carb pie, which has been popular for almost 20 years, focuses on reducing daily carbohydrate intake to less than 20% of total calories. It relies on fat and protein for energy. It slowly raises blood sugar and makes hunger less likely. It is especially friendly to sedentary people who do not like to move. I used to have a friend who worked in Internet operations. He worked 999 hours at the office every day, and was so tired after get off work that he didn’t even want to take a shower, let alone exercise. So I followed this idea and changed the white rice he ate every day to a smaller portion of brown rice, and changed the milk tea from full sugar to sugar-free with extra toppings. I usually added more eggs, lean beef, and fish. After eating shrimp as a supplement, I lost 16 pounds in 2 months. The only small problem was that when I stayed up late at night to catch up on projects, my brain obviously couldn't move, and I always made mistakes when typing code. Later, he added a "carbohydrate open day" and ate white rice as normal every Wednesday and Sunday, and then he slowly recovered.

There is also the Mediterranean diet pattern that has been repeatedly recommended by the WHO in recent years. The core is to eat more whole grains, deep-sea fish, fresh fruits and vegetables, use olive oil instead of ordinary vegetable oils, and eat less red meat and refined sugar. It can not only lose weight, but also regulate blood lipids and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. Last year, my mother followed the health care group in the community and ate it for half a year. Not only did she lose 10 pounds, her low-density lipoprotein, which was high in the previous physical examination, returned to the normal range. The only problem is that it is too unfriendly for us office workers who work overtime every day. We have to steam deep-sea fish and mix salads with oil and vinegar sauce every day. After working overtime until 8 o'clock, we only want to make a bowl of instant noodles with sausage and eggs. How can we have time to do these delicate things?

Oh yes, recently there is a more down-to-earth "flexible balance" trend among young people. They don't even need to count calories and just prepare meals according to their own fists: one fistful of staple food for each meal (whole grains account for more than half is best, but you can also eat white rice and white noodles if you don't have enough), two fistfuls of green leafy vegetables, one fistful of high-quality protein - eggs, milk, fish and shrimp, soy products and even braised chicken legs, and a fist-sized piece of low-sugar fruit as a snack. Last week, I helped a young girl who just graduated to plan a plan. She used to drink a cup of full-sugar bubble milk tea every day. She was so hungry that she went straight to the barbecue stall after work at night. I asked her to replace the milk tea with three-point sugar and oatmeal popping beads, and eat a small handful of original almonds when fishing around 3pm.

The most heated controversy on the Internet right now is simply "should we completely give up refined sugar and refined carbohydrates?" One side says that refined sugar is the culprit of gaining weight and should not be touched even once, while the other side says that losing weight is about being happy and eating whatever you want. In fact, according to the recommendations of our country’s 2022 Dietary Guidelines for Residents, the daily intake of refined sugar should be controlled within 10% of the total calories, which is about 25g, about the amount of half a cup of full-sugar milk tea. Think about it, if you drool while staring at the tiramisu in a dessert shop every day, and can’t bear to eat a whole piece at once for half a month, it would be better to eat a small piece every afternoon every week to satisfy your craving, and you will not be prone to overeating.

Of course, this does not mean that all methods under the banner of "nutrition and weight loss" are reliable. A young girl born in the 2000s came to me before and said that she followed a ketogenic blogger on the Internet, ate butter bacon every meal, and completely cut out carbohydrates. As a result, she lost 10 pounds in 2 months. My aunt postponed it for 3 months and went to the hospital to check for endocrine disorders. It cost her less than 10,000 yuan to get her back. To be honest, any nutrition and weight loss method will cause problems if it is taken to the extreme. If you have hypoglycemia, or your aunt is irregular, don't try any radical method of completely cutting off carbohydrates, as the gain outweighs the loss.

I have been a dietary coach for so many years, and my biggest feeling is that nutritious diet for weight loss does not put shackles on your diet at all, but helps you find a comfortable way of eating that you can stick to for a long time. If you don't like meat, just eat less carbohydrates and more meat. If you like rice and noodles, add more brown rice and corn, and more stir-fried vegetables. There is no need to copy other people's Internet celebrity recipes. After all, losing weight doesn’t just happen in two or three months. You can’t just eat boiled vegetables all your life, right? If you can eat comfortably and lose weight without regaining weight, then you are really making money.