Good nutrition isn’t brain surgery. Just follow these simple rules to feel good and lose fat all the time

1 Ditch the junk
Have you noticed all the adverts on TV for fresh broccoli? No? That’s because there aren’t any. Bloated corporations have no interest in selling you fresh food, only heavily branded, pre-packaged slop created using the cheapest ingredients and made to taste palatable by stuffing them with fat, salt and sugar. Most junk food is heavy in calories and light on nutrition.

By junk, we’re talking burgers, crisps, ready meals, anything in ‘a delicious crispy coating’, anything formed into unnatural shapes (stand up chicken nuggets), anything containing hydrogenated vegetable oils, and anything wrapped in pastry where you can’t identify the grisly substance inside. Buy fresh and learn to cook.

2 Balance calories in with calories out
It’s simple really. To stay the same weight you need to burn off the same number of calories through activity as you take in through food. If you eat more than you burn, that excess energy is stored as fat for use later on. Before you know it, you’re wearing vertical stripes in a vain attempt to look slimmer.

Here’s what you need to do: take your bodyweight in kilos and multiply by 29 to get your resting metabolic rate (RMR) – that’s the approximate number of calories you burn a day simply by going about your regular business of sleeping, eating, working, watching TV, etc. Now add the number of calories you burn through formal exercise. For example, the average man might burn 250 calories through 30 minutes of cardio training, or 200 calories for 30 minutes of intensive weight training. The total is the number of calories you burn a day, and also the maximum number of calories you can eat per day if you don’t want to put on weight.

3 Make fat only 25% of your diet
As we’ve just seen, it’s calories that count when it comes to controlling your body fat. However, dietary fat contains nine calories per gram compared with carbohydrates and protein, which both contain just four calories per gram. Basically, fatty foods are more than twice as calorific as other foods for the same sized meals, so it makes sense to limit your fat intake.

What’s more, the wrong kinds of fat can clog up arteries, making heart attacks more likely in later life. Try to steer clear of trans fats (it’s those hydrogenated vegetable oils again) and keep saturated fats, found mainly in red meats and dairy foods, to a minimum. Instead, go for ‘healthy’ fats, such as the kind found in fish, nuts and olive oil. These kinds are actually good for your heart if taken regularly in small doses.

4 Drink lots of water
There are hundreds of good reasons for drinking water – you’d be dead without it being number one on the list – but it is also vital for maintaining a healthy weight. If you don’t drink enough water your kidneys don’t function properly, and they pass some of their waste-filtration responsibilities on to the liver, which is then required to give up some of its fat-metabolising duties. The result is that you hang on to more stored fat than you would if you glugged down water on a regular basis. Drink water, lose fat –it really is that simple.

5 Eat five or six small meals a day

Most of us have been brought up on the concept of three square meals a day: breakfast, lunch and dinner. However, this throws your metabolism into disarray because you stuff yourself with food, creating an energy overload, followed by starving yourself until the next meal. Your insulin levels bounce up and down as your body tries to stabilise your blood sugar, and the result is that you store more fat than you actually need to.

A better method is to eat small meals throughout the day. That way you get a constant drip-feed of energy, your blood sugar levels remain stable, and you never get hungry, so avoiding that mid-afternoon raid on the biscuit tin.

6 Downsize your meals as the day goes on
Does this diet sound familiar? Coffee for breakfast, sandwich for lunch, huge plate of meat and potatoes plus cake and ice cream for dinner. It’s the Great British way of eating, and it could explain why we’re fast becoming a nation of bloaters.

In the morning you need energy to get you through the day, so then is the time to stock up on carb-heavy meals – cereals, toast, fruit. As the day goes on try to eat less with each meal so that your last meal is a small one, mainly protein-based. There’s no point having a large bowl of pasta before bed, because all that energy won’t get used up and will find a resting place in your sagging belly.

7 Eat 30g of fibre every day
Amazing stuff, fibre, and not just because it makes your bowels as regular as a Swiss watch. Fibre helps to lower insulin levels in your body, which decreases fat absorption. It also absorbs water and swells up in your stomach, making you feel fuller and less tempted by the sticky toffee pudding for afters. Good sources of fibre are oat-based cereals, beans and pulses.

8 Veg out
Vegetables are the one food you can eat as much of as you like all the time (within reason – eating a dozen cucumbers a day may have a strange effect on your digestive tract). They provide stacks of vitamins with minimum calories. Vegetables make great snack foods eaten raw – carrots, celery, etc – and can provide the mainstay of bigger meals when steamed, grilled or fried. To get the most out of veg, cook them quickly and eat them crunchy before they lose their nutrients. Five portions a day is a minimum – nine would be better.

9 Take supplements sparingly
If your diet is good enough, you shouldn’t need to pop pills to stay healthy, and you certainly shouldn’t use multivitamin tablets to make up for a poor diet. Your body needs a huge array of nutrients, which you can only get from having a varied diet.

That said, if you work out often, you might want to take extra vitamin C and E to replace lost stores during training. Vegetarians can miss out on vitamin B12 unless they use supplements.

10 Enjoy treats in moderation
If you like ice cream, have a bowl now and then. Just don’t demolish a two-litre tub of double-choc-chip every night. If you always deny yourself the stuff you like, you’re unlikely to be able to keep up a healthy eating plan, and you’re more likely to fall off the wagon and have a lard blowout.
The trick is to have occasional treats to keep you happy, while eating healthily the rest of the time. That way you’ll find it easier to make good nutrition part of your life, rather than something you do grudgingly for a short period.

With countless diets, programs and products promising to help you shed pounds, it should be easy. But as any veteran dieter knows, it’s hard to lose weight. It’s even harder keeping it off.
Simply eating too much and not being active enough is the cause of people being overweight. Too many people concentrate on losing pounds to improve appearance, when the primary focus of weight control should be to achieve and maintain good health.
To get the proper daily nutritional value:

* Eat a variety of foods
* Eat a high-fiber diet (choose more grains, fruits and vegetables instead of protein, fats and sugar)
* Maintain a low-fat, low cholesterol diet (eat no more than 30% of calories from fat, including only 10% from saturated fat)
* Use moderate amounts of salt and sodium and choose sugar substitutes
* Limit alcoholic intake

Often the first step to a good diet lies in changing food and eating behavior:

* Don’t skip meals
* Eat a series of small meals throughout the day and avoid a big meal late in the evening
* Eat and chew slowly
* Use a smaller-sized plate to achieve a “full plate”
* Don’t go back for seconds
* Bake or broil food instead of frying Order from light menus and purchase low-calorie or low-fat foods
(remember that low-fat does not necessarily mean low-calorie)
* Learn about food values and make healthy combinations in meals
* Reward yourself with non-food pleasures

Ounce for ounce, fat provides more than twice as many calories as protein or carbohydrate (nine calories vs. four). This energy difference may explain how fat promotes weight gain. Yet even when calories are the same, a person eating a high-fat diet tends to store more excess calories as body fat than someone eating a lower-fat diet.

Putting the right foods into our bodies is a daily struggle. Fast food drive-thrus and all-you-can-eat buffets lurk on every corner. Fat, salt, and sugar have been added to almost every package on the shelf at the grocery store. Grabbing a bag of chips or a can of soda at the convenience store is certainly a lot easier than peeling an orange or tossing a salad.

You’ve heard it all your life: “Eat more fruits and vegetables.” Now, medical science is telling you, too. But knowing is easy. It’s doing it that’s hard. People often turn to vitamins and other nutritional supplements to improve their diets. Unfortunately, vitamins alone can’t begin to replicate the thousands of different nutrients found in fresh fruits and vegetables.

You see, Americans don’t suffer from a vitamin deficiency; we suffer from a whole food deficiency. And this deficiency affects the young and old alike.

Today, healthcare professionals know more than ever about the relationship between good nutrition and good health. In simplest terms, healthy eating is about getting back to basics – by following the latest USDA guidelines at http://mypyramid.gov.

Eating the recommended 7-13 servings of fruits and vegetables every day is the best way to get the whole food nutrition you need to stay healthy. But healthy eating takes time and planning – and can cost a lot of money – and with today’s busy lifestyles it’s easy to miss out on the nutrients you need. That’s why adding Juice Plus+ to your diet is an important step for you and every member of your family. It’s a simple, affordable way to fuel your body with good nutrition

Tired of playing “Diet Deal or No Deal” with yourself as a delectable chocolate cake practically dances before your eyes? Fed up with the guilt pangs that accompany every piece of pizza?

Here’s how to decide whether to pass up a temptation or enjoy it with no regrets: Put a fitness price tag on your favorite indulgence that shows how much extra workout time it will take to burn off its calories. For example:

Enjoying an occasional cheesy slice of pizza may be well worth the price — adding 36 minutes to your regular brisk walk, 20 to a bike ride, or only 15 on the stair-step machine. Boom! Just like that, those calories are gone. But do you also have 60 more minutes to spare to walk off that chocolate cake?

No math required, by the way. Use the RealAge Exercise Estimator. It’s more accurate than most because it allows you to enter your weight (which affects how quickly you burn calories).

Here’s a sampling of treats — the kind that even the healthiest eaters often find too good to totally give up — and how much time it takes for a 135-pound person to burn them off. Now those extra calories won’t show up on your scales. Or your waist.

It is impossible to separate your eating from your health and fitness.  The overused, but all too true saying that “You are what you eat” is worth closer inspection.  Most of us want to believe that the high fat, low food value that constitutes the American diet is somehow turned into good fuel for our body.  What have you eaten in the last four days?  Based on what you know about what is good food, what is your score on the quality of food you have eaten in the last week?  Would you describe your diet as “high octane fuel” that your body needs?  Or, is your body having to sift through the debris that you have ingested to find a few worthwhile nutrients?

If you look around when you are driving, food is everywhere.  Most of it is not what our body wants or needs.  No wonder we overeat so often.  Our body is continuing to look for food that has taste and can really satisfy.  The following are a few helpful hints that might help you improve your quality of eating:

1. Do not rely on “willpower” to help you make good decisions about eating.

2. When you are really, really hungry, eat the best food for your body

3. Fiber is as close to a magic bullet as there is to satisfy hunger

4. Drink water when you feel hungry

5. Finish your last meal of the day at least two hours before bedtime

6. A small breakfast in the morning gives your body a head start

7. Think long term about your weight

8. Try to consume more high volume, low calorie dense foods

Do not rely on “willpower” to help you make good decisions about eating:  Most people have an idea of what eating behavior routinely causes them to overeat.  They lament “I just end up going to the freezer and eating a pint of ice cream.”  If that’s the case get rid of the ice cream.  Throw it in the trash and get it out of the house.  Make it difficult for you to give in to your dietary whims.  Drive an extra couple of blocks to avoid the convenience store you routinely stop to eat at on your way home.  Willpower is overrated.  Arrange your environment so you can be successful with minimal “willpower.”

When you are really, really hungry eat the best food for your body: Pay attention to this tip because it works.  When I was training for The Ironman, I would train Sunday mornings for 5 hours on the bike.  Then I would go to church and take the family to a Sunday pizza buffet.  I figured I had deserved it; I had burned nearly 4,000 calories.  By the time I reached the buffet, I was starved. Forty five minutes later I had eaten 4,500 calories and I was stuffed.  On my biggest workout of the week, I had eaten more calories than I had burned.  I gained body fat that day.  More interesting, the next Sunday, I started thinking about that buffet an hour before the ride ended.  Each week I could picture that buffet and could not wait to get to my reward for training so hard.  Then it hit me.  I had conditioned myself to obsess on a high calorie dense food.  My mind was conditioned to associate hunger with pizza.  Now I will eat a fruit salad when I come in from a long training session.  Guess what I start craving thirty minutes before the end of my bike ride these days?  Make this “paired association” work for you, not against you.  When you are really hungry, eat something that your body can really use.

Fiber is as close to a magic bullet as there is to satisfy hunger. Eat foods with high fiber content.  If you are older, you may want to add a fiber supplement with your meals.  You will feel satisfied with less food and even lower the risk of some cancers.

Drink water when you feel hungry. Thirst is often confused with hunger.  Dehydration is common during the summer.  Try drinking a glass of water, wait for a while and see if you are still hungry.  You may find that a glass of water will be what your body wanted.

Finish your last meal of the day at least two hours before bedtime Late meals seem to be increasingly common in our fast pace world.  Dinner is bumped back to late in the evening.  Then you end up going to bed before your food has emptied from your stomach.  When you sleep, you do not need many calories.  What can the body do with that late dinner?  You guessed it, the dinner is stored as fat.  Eat earlier and take a fifteen minute walk after dinner.  It is a great time to discuss the day with a significant other.  By the time you get back home your hunger has disappeared.  You have kept yourself from snacking on an additional three or four hundred calories.

A small breakfast in the morning gives your body a head start. Two to three hundred calories in the morning gives your body a little fuel.  We tend to deplete our glycogen during the night.  A small breakfast is part of a smart balanced diet.  I know people who do not eat anything until lunch, or worse, dinner.  By then they are famished and get out of control at dinner.  They end up eating more than they would have had they eaten three smaller meals.

Think long term about your weight. We live in a world of immediate gratification.  People often decide they want to lose weight and want to “lose 5 lbs a week”.  They think losing 5-10 lbs/wk is easy; after all they see it on TV all the time.  Let’s look at the math of losing body fat.  One pound of body fat contains about 3,500 calories.  If you burn 500 calories a day more than you eat, every day for a week you will lose one pound of fat per week.  I know that in the beginning you also lose an equal amount of water, so it is possible the scales may show up to four pounds the first week or two.  If you can average one pound of fat per week over a long period of time, you are really doing well; pat yourself on the back!

Try to consume more high volume, low calorie dense foods. My pizza example above is an example of a high density food.  A typical slice of pizza can have 400 calories.  It is pretty easy to eat 4 slices of pizza and still be hungry.  Four slices at 400 calories is around 1,600 calories.  That is a whole days worth of calories for most of us.  A medium sized apple has about 100 calories.  Can you imagine eating 16 apples in a single meal?  No, you would be full after three apples.  That is the difference between high density foods and low density high volume foods.  Fat has three times as many calories as protein or carbohydrates.  Minimize the fat in your diet.  If you think fatty foods taste better, reread the section above about the food you eat when you are really hungry.  You train yourself to like certain types of foods.  You can retrain your self to eat healthy and never feel deprived.

Diet is such a complicated area.  There are a plethora of books about diet and weight loss.  I hope that these few tips will be helpful in getting your diet headed in the right direction, without massive willpower or deprivation.  Eat healthy and enjoy the improved quality of life that comes with your health.