With the onset of spring and warm days we see in our patients a desperate desire to lose weight. Many of them in the quest to “make it to summer” fall into restrictive diets that pose a risk to their health.
It is important that the focus is not on losing weight but on incorporating healthy behavior patterns in terms of eating and physical activity regardless of the season of the year in which we are.
Meal planning is important for healthy weight loss”
While weekly meal plans with predetermined meals help many patients, I find that everyone knows what they feel like eating depending on the day, activity, or schedule. It usually happens that if the patient cannot comply with what is strictly indicated, he feels guilty for not being able to comply or sustain what is indicated, generating frustration.
The main objective is the adoption of healthy life habitsIn other words, maintaining an active physical style, improving eating patterns, working on emotions and stress that are triggers of eating behavior disorders.
There is a consensus about the need to reduce calories in the diet therapy plan to be effective, you do not lose weight if you do not ingest fewer calories than are expended. There is a wrong idea about losing weight, many patients think that eating little will lose weight, if we eat little we spend little since our metabolism goes into saving mode. If the patient must lose weight according to their BMI (body mass index) requires it you must first put yourself in the hands of trained professionals for the management of overweight and obesity.
There are no good and bad foods but healthy or unhealthy habits versus eating. Many times we buy a food and we think if it is good or bad according to the calories it has and that is a mistake, other times we think that the success of a food plan will be based on consuming certain daily calories; That keeps us away from healthy habits and being smart when it comes to consuming products. We count calories but we do not think about the nutrients that these foods provide us. We don’t think about whether they have fiber, saturated fat, or essential fatty acids; in the amount of sodium or the contribution of some vitamin.
Low calories is not synonymous with good nutrition, we must be intelligent consumers and not obsess or limit ourselves to eating certain foods considering them “Light” or “not light”. A healthy eating plan is not a matter of accounts but of intelligence.
You have to moderate the portions and control the frequency of food that they are not so healthy or that they are more tempting to us and we must always remember, even if it is a healthy meal if it is left over, we should be smart when choosing what, how, when and how much we eat.
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