Food & The Calories In Food

You can spend an awful lot of time thinking about the foods you eat When you are trying to lose weight. You not only have to watch what you eat, you also have to think about what you're not eating.

How to Balance That Intake

Eating a balanced diet, whether for weight loss or for just healthy eating, combines a number of different aspects. Firstly, the type of foods you eat. Secondly the amount of foods you eat. Lastly, your calorific needs based on what you do during the day.

You can carefully watch the types of foods you're eating as well as making sure you only eat small portions, but unless you know roughly how many calories you need each day, how are you going to know how much you're able to eat to carefully manage your weight?

Look at the Nutritional Value

As discussed above, in addition to watching portion sizes, its also important to think abut the total nutritional balance of a 'restrictive diet'. If you're not careful, the diet you're on can leave you short of important nutrients.

Knowing the type of foods and their nutritional value is not asd easy as it sounds. You can use the nutition labels and weight out all your food - but is that really practical? With experience you will get to know roughly what you're eating and the portions you should be aiming for - but it will take time and practise. Keeping a food diary/blog is anexcellent way of starting this process.

Over Doing the Calories?

Two areas where people often slip up in their quest for managing their weight is taking in too many fats and over doing it when you go out to restaurants. For a health and balanced diet, it's vitally important to think about restaurant foods as well as fats. Both can sabotage even the most well-meaning dieter.

Restaurant foods are a minefield for someone trying to control their weight, but there are strategies you can follow to enable you to eat out without going badly off diet.

• Pick the restaurant if you have any control over where you're going - for example, if you're on a low carb diet, a steak house would be a good choice (order steak and salad) - pizza is a no no
• Salads are a good option but watch for calorie laden dressings.
• Don't be afraid to ask for what you want - most places will be amenable to special orders so long as they're within reason.
• Avoid the known troublemakers - so order salad or vegetables instead of chips or potatoes.
• Avoid all fried foods
• Avoid that little treat of a pudding - have a black coffee instead (zero calories) - not a Latte (up to 250 calories)

What Is It With Fats?

Fats are the biggest problem when eating out. Its not that our body doesnt need fat it does but the modern diet contains way too much, and many restaurant foods are simply loaded with fat.

Unless you are on a really restrictive diet, you'll get enough fat its in healthy food like fish, even wheat germ. But at 9 calories per gram, as opposed to the 4 per gram of carbohydrate and protein, excess fat can pack on the pounds quicker than anything else.