Diet Meal Plan: An Easy and Healthy Way to Lose Weight

You have heard it on the TV, or seen it on the Internet, or read it in your newspaper; even the late night TV comics shove this reality under our noses: the average American is overweight. If you are an "average American" or an "above-average American", you probably struggle, like many of us, with feelings of guilt, or shame about carrying extra pounds. One way to address this issue is by planning out healthy meals on a day-by-day basis. A diet meal plan assures that you eat the healthy foods that your body needs at each meal, and that you avoid eating foods that could cause you to gain weight. Hate counting calories? In a well-designed diet meal plan you don't have to worry about calories - they are already counted for you.

Someone once said, "Salads are God's punishment for being fat." Some people enjoy eating salads; others don't. And even those who do enjoy salads can become bored with a steady diet of greens and roughage. A well-balanced diet meal plan isn't all salads, and spinach, and alfalfa sprouts, and tofu. Some meal plans include very creative recipes which include fruits, and cheeses, and meats, and eggs, and bread. A good diet meal plan will include a broad variety of foods from the different basic food groups, while staying within a specific range of calories and fats for each day.

Most diet meal plans lay out the menus for breakfast, lunch, and dinner on a weekly basis. Many include a mid-morning and mid-afternoon snack. Some plans extend the planning for several weeks or longer, up to a month. Given the broad variety of menus in many plans, it would be conceivable that dieters could recycle the plan when they reach its conclusion, starting back with the meal plans of the first week.

Some diet meal plans will start out with a series of menus designed to detoxify your body and to help you rid your body of toxins, fats, and residues that you have acquired through eating foods that are high in fats and sodium. These detoxification menus may include drinking lots of water and eating only raw or unprocessed foods. The detoxification diet usually lasts for the first week of the diet meal plan. The plan then phases into a more normal kind of diet.

Diet meal plans take into consideration the way our bodies process certain kinds of foods. We all love cake, cookies, pastries, donuts, pasta, bread, and alcohol. These foods all contain simple carbohydrates, and when we eat them the carbs are absorbed as glucose - sugar - into our blood streams. When our blood sugar rises, our body secretes more insulin into the bloodstream to counteract the sugar. Excess insulin in the bloodstream is stored as fat. That's why so many of the foods we love can pack on the pounds. Diet meal plans seek to reduce our intake of foods that cause us to gain weight, and include foods that can reduce the effects of eating simple carbohydrates. Foods high in crude fiber - such as fresh vegetables, whole grains, and beans are very helpful in reducing blood sugar. Diet meal plans are very intentional about including high fiber foods to help reduce fat-causing blood sugar.

Eating fat-free foods is not a sure-fire way to lose weight. There has been much said in recent years about how we need to reduce our intake of fats. Food manufacturers have gotten that message, and have begun to develop more low-fat or fat-free foods. The difficulty with that is that the ingredients they often substitute for fats are sugar or other simple carbohydrates. Some foods may be low in fat but still high in calories. In putting together a diet meal plan that is to be low in fat, one needs to check the calorie content of the low fat foods to be sure that the fat hasn't been replaced with sugar. Good choices of low-fat and low-carbohydrate foods are fresh fruits and vegetables, and high fiber foods such as grains and beans.

Some of us tend to be "emotional eaters". When we are feeling lonely, or anxious, or stressed, or bored we tend to turn to food as a way to alleviate our emotional discomfort. Many of us aren't even aware that we are using food as a coping strategy to deal with our emotions. Sticking to a diet meal plan provides a structure and discipline that helps to avoid emotional eating.

Forget 'supersizing' your meals. Most diet meal plans recommend what foods you should eat, and also stipulate what the size of the portions of those foods should be. Dieting involves not only paying attention to what kinds of foods we eat, but also paying attention to how much food we eat.

A meal planning guide, or a dietician could help you develop a diet meal plan that is specially designed to include foods you enjoy, and to meet your specific health needs and weight-loss goals. No one knows better than you do what your needs and tastes are. Developing your own diet meal plan gives you the options and flexibility to establish a plan that fits you and that you would be more likely to follow.

Weight loss or weight management involves paying attention to the 'economy' of how our calories are utilized in our bodies. Reducing the intake of calories through a diet meal plan may have some effect on how we manage our weight. But a more complete plan involves increasing the number of calories that our bodies utilize or burn off. Calories not utilized or burned off are stored in our bodies as fat. The best way to get our bodies to use up calories is through a program of regular exercise. Most diet meal plans recommend that a program of regular exercise be utilized in conjunction with following the meal plan.

Summary

This article discusses the nature and benefits of following a diet meal plan in order to lose weight. It states the following ideas about diet meal plans:
* A diet meal plan assures that you eat the healthy foods that your body needs at each meal, and that you avoid eating foods that could cause you to gain weight.
* A diet meal plan can provide a wide variety of foods so that you don't get bored eating the same thing at every meal.
* Diet meal plans provide pre-planned menus and recipes on a weekly basis.
* Some diet meal plans begin with a detoxification diet.
* Diet meal plans take into consideration the ways our bodies process foods, and seek to provide the best combination of foods in our diet.
* Diet meal plans pay attention not only to the fat content in food but also to the calorie content.
* A diet meal plan provides structure and discipline that helps to avoid emotional overeating.
* Diet meal plans give attempt to control the amount of food we eat by recommending the size of the portions that are eaten.
* Diet meal plans can be tailor-made to match the tastes and needs of the specific individual.
* Diet meal plans should be joined with a regular program of exercise to help burn off calories.