What is a balanced diet to lose weight and have good health?

The total calories you should consume depends on whether you are a woman or a man. It depends on your body structure and your activity level. So you need to make some adjustments to the numbers I present.

If you have been eating around 1,800 calories per day, you can slowly reduce your intake to 1,600. Work up from this level over a period of one month to 1,400 calories. Do not go below 1200 calories per day. Otherwise, you can overload your body.

If you’re just starting out and eating 2,400 calories, cut your calories to 2,000 or 2,100. If you don’t lose weight in 2-3 weeks, cut your calories. For a month, you can go down to 1600 calories and see if you start to lose weight. If you do, stay on this level.

It is not a good idea to make a drastic change in your food intake as your body may react and go into a “starvation mode”. In this mode, your body will store more fat, making it harder for you to lose weight.

Remember not to eat junk food. When you eat quality food, it takes less food to feel full compared to eating junk food.

Proteins, carbohydrates and fats

There are many ideas about what combination or percentages you should eat of the various nutrients: protein, carbohydrates, and fat. I do not believe that there are exact percentages that provide weight loss and good health for all people. Each of you will require different percentages depending on your weight, health, body structure, emotional makeup, and a variety of other conditions. For this reason, some diet programs work for some people and not for others.

One of the best eating habits programs that will help you lose weight is to eat:

* quality protein

* low glycemic carbohydrates

*quality fats

* high fiber content

* high water consumption

Quality protein: It is essential for the body to survive. There are 8 essential and 14 non-essential amino acids. Protein is used to regulate certain body processes by contributing to various chemical reactions and creating a number of body chemicals.

Eating too much protein results in an acidic body, which promotes disease. Protein intake alone causes a 25% increase in your metabolism. When combined with fat and carbohydrates, there is only a 10% increase. What this means is that eating more protein and less fat and carbohydrates gives your metabolism a boost.

It is recommended that around 30% – 35% of your eating habits consist of protein.

Carbohydrates: Consist of simple and complex sugars. When carbohydrates are ingested, they are broken down into sucrose, which is readily accepted by cells. Sucrose is converted to energy in your cells. If you eat a lot of high-glycemic carbohydrates, your bloodstream becomes saturated with sucrose. The excess sucrose in your cells will be converted to fat and stored.

Since most people have gained weight eating high-glycemic carbohydrates, it is best to change your eating habits and decrease your intake of these carbohydrates. In general, people have been eating 80% high glycemic index (high GF) foods and 20% low glycemic index (low GF) foods. You need to change that to 80% low FG and 20% high FG.

This means you should limit your intake of foods such as potatoes, bread, corn, pasta, bagels, and any flour products. HighGF encourages fat storage because the more sucrose you have in your blood, the more sucrose is escorted into your cells by insulin.

You need to focus on foods, which are LowGF. Many of these foods are vegetables with small amounts of carbohydrates and high fiber content.

LowGF discourages fat storage as there is less sucrose in the blood and less is escorted into cells.

Quality fats: eaten with meals, they prevent sugars from passing quickly into the bloodstream.

You need to eat more of the good fats. It is these fats that will help you lose weight. Good fats are omega 3, omega 6 and medium chain fatty acids, MCFA.

Here’s the breakdown of how much of each type of fat you should be eating. These percentages are the ones you should work on so that fats provide you with good health and help you keep your weight down.

* saturated fat 10%

* polyunsaturated fat 20%

* Monounsaturated fats 60%

There you have it, the numbers and percentages of protein, carbohydrates and fats that give you a balanced diet so you can lose weight.