Trying to lose weight is a tricky proposition. There have been countless fad diets in the past, and it seems as though several new ones are thrust onto the market every day. This can make it all too confusing to figure out what makes for a healthy eating weight loss plan. Some diets claim you can shed pounds by eating only one or two “magic” foods; others say you can eat all the fat and protein you want, as long as you don’t eat any carbohydrates; still others say you have to eat at certain times and follow strange eating rituals to lose weight. It’s enough to confuse anybody.

It is true that some diets really do work, but their ability to get rid of extra weight shouldn’t be the only consideration when deciding which one to follow. You also need to consider how healthy they are. Let’s face it, you could lose a lot of weight by not eating anything at all–by literally starving yourself–but nobody would say that starvation is healthy.

Something a lot of people seem to forget is that there is no need to go by what somebody else says is the best diet. After all, we are all different, and what works for one person may not work for you. If you have the time and resources, you can develop your own healthy eating weight loss plan. This will take a bit of work, and you will have to have a good idea of what foods you should be eating, and which ones to avoid. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons so many people choose to follow a pre-made diet plan. There’s nothing wrong with doing it that way, as long as you can be reasonably assured that the diet you want to follow is healthy.

If there is such a thing as a golden rule of weight loss, it’s this: you can only lose weight when you burn more calories than you take in. All diets that work simply use some variation of food and exercise to accomplish this goal. You can do the same thing by knowing how many calories are in the foods you eat, and how many calories you burn doing various exercises. To be fair, it’s not always easy to keep track of all of this, so following a healthy eating weight loss plan can simplify the process. This way you can follow it, and assume that the calorie calculations have already been made for you.

If you are only a little bit overweight, and in pretty good health, then you may not have to invest in a full-blown diet plan. Instead, you may be able to get away with making a few small adjustments to your current diet. On the other hand, if you are several pounds overweight, or aren’t as healthy as you would like to be then a healthy eating weight loss plan that was created by somebody with credentials makes a lot more sense.

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Maybe you are already at an ideal weight and feel really good on a regular basis. If so, you may think there is no need to concern yourself with a healthy eating plan. Who knows, maybe you’re one of those fortunate souls who naturally eats the best foods, and you don’t have to spend any time worrying about what you eat. Perhaps you seem to be able to eat anything you want and have nothing but perfect health to show for it.

Or…

You may be like the vast majority of us and have to actually give some consideration to the foods you eat. While most of us don’t really give all that much thought to a healthy eating plan, we really should. To be fair, you probably do think about the food you eat from time to time. For instance, it’s quite common to eat a lot of junk food and then try to compensate by eating healthier for the rest of the day. It’s good that you’re trying, but this type of behavior doesn’t quite qualify as an eating plan. What you need is a diet that looks at the bigger picture.

The majority of us don’t really know how much sugar we’re taking in, for example. We also tend to eat a lot more fat than we’re aware of. Furthermore, we tend to not think of being on a healthy eating plan at all, unless there is a good reason. Needing to lose weight for an upcoming event (wedding, beach season, class reunion, etc.), or health concerns (diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure) are common reasons.

We only start to think about eating healthier when stuff like this happens. The problem is that it can be too little, too late. It may be possible to repair ill health through proper diet, but once the damage is done, there is no guarantee that it can be fixed. It will also take more effort to make it work. But had we been eating well from the start, there is a very good chance that these ill effects would never have happened. Therefore, it makes a lot more sense to start a healthy eating plan as soon as possible.

If you are in good health now, you could still be at risk if you don’t get your diet in check. There could be environmental factors that contribute to bad health over the long term. A family history of certain diseases could also increase your risk. The funny thing is that some people use these risk factors as an excuse to eat nothing but garbage. They figure they’re going to get these diseases anyway, so that gives them a free ticket to eat whatever they want. That’s sad. The truth is that there are no guarantees that a healthy eating plan will be enough to overcome these risk factors, but it will decrease your risk substantially. So, it only makes sense to eat well. Plus, it is never too late to start.

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Whenever we get too busy or stressed, we all tend to make poor food choices that will actually increase stress and cause other problems. To get the most of your healthy eating and avoid stress, follow these simple tips.

Always eat breakfast
Even though you may think you aren’t hungry, you need to eat something. Skipping breakfast makes it harder to maintain the proper blood and sugar levels during the day, so you should always eat something.

Carry a snack
Keeping some protein rich snacks in your car, office, or pocket book will help you avoid blood sugar level dips, the accompanying mood swings, and the fatigue. Trail mix, granola bars, and energy bars all have the nutrients you need.

Healthy munchies
If you like to munch when you’re stressed out, you can replace chips or other non healthy foods with carrot sticks, celery sticks, or even sunflower seeds.

Bring your lunch
Although a lot of people prefer to eat fast food for lunch, you can save a lot of money and actually eat healthier if you take a few minutes and pack a lunch at home. Even if you only do this a few times a week, you’ll see a much better improvement over eating out.

Stock your home
As important as it is to get the bad food out of your house, it’s even more important to get the good food in! The best way to do this is to plan a menu of healthy meals at snacks at the beginning of the week, list the ingedients you need, then go shop for it. This way, you’ll know what you want when you need it and you won’t have to stress over what to eat.

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Moderation is one thing that you should be looking for when you are considering which healthy eating plans are the best. To put it another way, if the plan has extreme restrictions or makes wild claims, then the chances are good that it’s unhealthy. The best diets will focus on moderation in the types of food you eat, as well as the portions it recommends.

If you have been considering various plans, then you have probably seen those that make claims that can tip you off to why they may not be so good. A common example is a diet that says you can eat as much of one food as you want, but then severely limits how much you can eat of other foods. Low carb diets may be the most popular example. They let you eat all the protein and fat that you want, but try to get you to cut out as many carbohydrates as you can.

While these so-called “healthy eating plans” say you can eat all the meat, fish and eggs you want and lose weight, you need to realize there are also risks. First, people are designed to eat a whole range of foods. Yes, you may be able to lose weight on a low-carb diet, but it could have negative impact on your health if all you’re eating is meat and eggs. Second, the idea of eating all the bacon (for example) you want sounds very appealing at first, but the craving for carbohydrates is more than most people can handle, and they end up binging on carbs…and weighing more than when they started.

Any type of diet that makes similar claims should be looked at with suspicion. A diet that tells you that you can eat all of the fat you like is just as bad as any diet that tells you to eat as much sugar as you want. It just doesn’t make sense. To be fair there are also diets that tell you to cut out all fat. Surely these must be healthy eating plans, right? Not really. Again, they are too restrictive for certain foods, and that’s your clue that they may not be good for you. The truth is that there are healthy fats. Again, the key here is moderation.

Of course the appeal for all of these types of diets is the same. What happens is that a person may try a reasonable diet, but then they find they crave certain foods. Say the diet says you shouldn’t eat cheeseburgers. There’s nothing wrong with that, but then you start wishing you could eat a big, juicy cheeseburger and go off the diet. Then later on you decide you’d like to lose weight again. But here’s the catch: you look for a diet that allows you to eat the cheeseburgers you missed on the last diet. You start off doing great, but even though you can eat your burgers, the new diet doesn’t let you eat pasta. So, you go off this diet and look for one that lets you eat pasta…and you keep repeating this cycle over and over again.

But real healthy eating plans let you eat just about anything you want, but only in moderation. In other words, they make allowances for the occasional treat, but they offset it in some way; they balance it out. Such a plan is much easier to stick to and will give you long term results.

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