Whether you are on a weight-loss or a weight-maintenance regimen, many people feel hungry soon after their gym workout or a swim session. Your body needs fuel to exercise and the source of this fuel is food. If you fail to provide your body the right fuel, it can affect your weight loss success. Therefore, you need to find the right balance of healthy and filling foods. We come across a lot of different foods on a daily basis. Choosing the right foods among them becomes quite challenging.
Food Facts
Simple carbohydrates are the refined foods, which lack fiber found in complex carbohydrates (whole grains, fruits, and veggies). Examples of these are white flours, white rice, pasta, pastries, soda, and other sugary foods and drinks. These carbs are metabolized by your body quickly. So while you may feel raring to go after eating them, this energy boost will soon be followed by a major energy slump, making it hard to workout at your optimum level.
Apart from this, when your food consists of simple carbs, you will feel hungry more often, as these foods are metabolized quickly, and you will again tend to reach out for more of the high-calorie snacks. This pattern could defeat the purpose of your high impact exercise regimen, and prevent you from achieving your desired weight loss goals.
Tips to Arrive at a Productive Energy Diet
- Avoid all refined and simple sugars, including honey. Apart from the table sugar, watch out for sugar contents in juices, canned foods, other beverages.
- Avoid refined carbohydrates that include white bread, pasta, biscuits, refined flour (maida) products, white rice, and other processed foods. Substitute with whole grain products like whole wheat bread, wheat pasta, brown rice, etc.
- Alcohol packs in 7 calories/ml. It is all energy laden, and it can interrupt your weight loss. Therefore, limit your alcohol intake.
- Eat at least 4 servings of raw or lightly cooked vegetables daily. Include cabbages, tomatoes, and green leafy veggies that are full of fiber and other essential nutrients. These help a great deal in achieving your weight loss goals.
- Have 2 or more servings of fresh fruit every day. Seasonal fruits are the best when it comes to providing better immunity and all essential nutrients.
- Include a whole lot of lentils, nuts, seeds, and whole grains in your diet. Care must be taken to limit the quantity of salt you add to your nuts and seeds.
- Include fish in your diet, as it provides calories through protein which will help you achieve your goal.
- Drink plenty of liquids, which include water, coconut water, buttermilk, and skimmed milk. Drinking herbal teas and diluted, unsweetened fruit juices are also good ways of getting sufficient fluids in.
What Constitutes a Productive Energy Diet
Your diet will become an energy diet only when these 4 nutrients are included:
- Proteins: When you are on a weight-loss regimen, it is good if you do not feel hungry more often. Protein does just that and keeps you feeling full for longer periods of time. In a study conducted in 2009, people who ate a high-protein breakfast took lesser calories during lunch than the people whose breakfast contained low-protein foods.
- Fats: There are good fats and bad fats. Good fats are good for your heart as well as they give you a feeling of fullness long after you have had them. These are monounsaturated fatty acids and omega 3 fatty acids. Foods that contain these are nuts, avocados, certain fish, walnuts, and chocolate. When you incorporate these in your diet, you tend to feel less hungry and will not reach out for other unhealthy foods often. The journal Appetite had published a study that showed this. The participants of this study who took more omega 3 fatty acids felt less hungry immediately after or even 2 hours after having their food as compared to those who took less than 260 mg of omega 3.
- Calcium and Vitamin D: We all know that both of these are present in dairy products and vitamin D helps the body absorb and use calcium. In a study (conducted by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health), college students who ate at least 3 servings of dairy products along with a healthy diet gained less weight and actually lost belly fat compared to those who did not eat dairy. Experts say that vitamin D has an interesting role to play in weight loss. They say that excess body fat holds on to vitamin D making it unavailable for use in the body. This creates an impression of vitamin D deficiency and interferes with the action of leptin (a hormone that signals to the brain that you are satiated). Without feeling satiated, you will not know when to stop eating. Therefore, include plenty of dairy products in your diet, and if you are the indoor kind, supplement your food with vitamin D.
- Fiber: Fiber is contained in whole grains, fruits, and veggies. This variety of food keeps you full for prolonged periods of time, thus making you less hungry and preventing overeating. This was demonstrated in a 2009 study at Brigham Young University College of Health and Human Performance, where women who ate sufficient fiber lost weight and maintained the low weight.
Indulge in intelligent weight-loss programs than just starving yourself. Make the foods that you choose to eat work for you as hard as you do at the gym. Now you know what foods your diet should contain to make it a high-energy diet that will work for you in your weight-loss pursuits.
