At least 50 per cent of your plate should be vegetables if you are trying to lose weight, according to Daniels.
Vegetables are really good because theyre high in fibre, antioxidants, they are going to fill you up - because theyre high in fibre - but theyre low in energy, Daniels explains. So while they fill you up and make you feel full, theyre not providing you with a lot of calories.
Diets often recommend cutting carbohydrates because they can speed up weight loss by targeting water weight. However, not only is this not sustainable (youll put that weight back on the minute you reintroduce carbs to your diet), but carbohydrates are essential to your diet.
Carbohydrates should be the biggest food group in our diet because they provide us with sustainable energy throughout the day, says Bond. They are useful for fuelling our brain so we can concentrate, and giving us the energy to do exercise. She recommends brown rice, wholegrain pasta, porridge, and quinoa.
Interestingly, Daniels argues that its not even the type of carbohydrates, but how youre pairing the carbohydrates as this can affect your blood sugar levels. She recommends pairing carbs (i.e. white bread) with protein (i.e. chicken) and fibre (i.e. salad) as this ensures the sugar is released more slowly into the bloodstream.
Alongside carbs, be sure to keep fats in your diet especially monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, which boost good cholesterol, make us feel fuller, and are good for our hair, skin and nails. Daniels recommends rapeseed oil, extra virgin olive oil, avocado, and oily fish.
Consider the humble broccoli floret. Agriculturally tweaked to be a bit more palatable than its prehistoric predecessors, sure, but mostly unprocessed and, at 170 caloriesa head, basically impossible to overeat. Compare that with Custard Creams at 58 calories each, youve probably eaten three while you read this article and you get a sense of the problem: processed foods are often extremely calorie dense, engineered to be deliciously moreish, and all too easy to overeat.
Sugar, for instance, can feel addictive enough in its own right, but combined with salt or fat, its almost inhumanly addictive. Make sure the bulk of your diet is whole, unprocessed foods meat, eggs, and veg all fit the bill and youll find it tough to accidentally overindulge.
If you implement the recommended deficit of 500 calories a day, you should be able to lose between one and two pounds a week. People think that is not very much but, actually, when you look at what a pound is a bag of sugar its actually quite a lot of weight loss, Bondsays.
Daniels and Bondagree that, within a couple of months, you should start to see some changes. If you carry on with those changes, six months quickly passes, and you find that youre feeling better, your clothes are fitting better and you barely notice it because it was just little things that youve changed in your diet rather than something drastic, Daniels says.
Youve set your goal and youre at your ideal weight. Now the hard work really begins.
It starts with maintaining those slight changes to your diet, which should help to wean ourselves off having that desire for sweet food, says Bond.
Below, experts share more practical tips on how to keep the weight off permanantely.
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How to lose weight and keep it off for good - The Telegraph
