Diets That Don't Suck

If the word “diet” conjures visions of stale, dry and unappealing meals, this article was written for you.

“Diet” simply refers to the foods we typically eat and really has nothing to do with losing weight or burning fat. Everyone is on a “diet” – it’s the quality of that diet that determines whether you look hot, or a cross between Barney and a beached whale.

Most people who want to burn fat focus on the diet aspect more than exercise as a tool to slim down. This is not far from wrong since it’s certainly easier to skip 100 calories than to have to burn it off with cardio (it takes about 10 to 15 minutes of hard cardio to burn 100 calories).

What most people don’t understand is that the food you eat to burn fat doesn’t have to taste like cardboard and smell like dried newspaper.

In fact, you can eat Twinkies and drink whiskey all day and still lose weight. Apart from dying from malnutrition and maybe liver disease, you should be nice and skinny when you kick.

It’s all in the QUANTITY. Yes, that’s right, stop heaping on those extra portions, supersizing your meals and finishing off a whole quart of ice cream in one sitting.

Americans in particular, due to their affluence and fast-food addiction, are huge over eaters. Granted, the foods they typically eat – high in salts, sugars and saturated fats – are bad too, but it’s the amount they tuck away that astounds people from other countries.

In the good ‘ol USA, it’s normal to serve enough food to feed a small African village for a week at every sit-down meal. You have a meat, a starch – normally bread, vegetables – 1 or 2 types, a sugary drink or milk and dessert.

These items could easily fit into your diet in the right amounts, but the “full plate” could have more than 1,000 calories – or about half your daily allowance.

Then there’s the snacks – even a large glazed doughnut by itself only has 300 calories (bad enough) – but try eating two or three and a large Starbucks mocha super whatever frappe. You’re talking way over 1,000 calories. Worse, the nutritional value of all these calories is horrible – mostly fats and sugars.

But hey, “That’s my breakfast,” you say. Sure, and lunch too, based on the calorie count.

In fact, even binging on doughnuts is not going to make you fat. It’s binging on doughnuts, then hitting Wendy’s for lunch and having a pizza in front of the tube that will get you fat – and quick.

So you forget to eat breakfast and its pastry day at work – don’t worry, just don’t eat more than one and stick to black coffee. You’ll only be getting about 400 calories and you can make it up nutritionally by eating a good lunch.

You can still eat all your favorite foods – just eat less than you normally would and try to start learning which foods taste good, fill you up and provide the best nutritional balance.

Instead of waiting until you are starving to death, try eating smaller meals more frequently. This keeps you from “pigging out” as much.

Exercise is also key – even if you don’t train for the Olympics. Moderate exercise for as little as 30 minutes, 3 to 4 days a week will raise your metabolism and give you more strength with correspondingly higher energy levels.

Plus, with exercise, you can eat even more of your favorite “sin foods” and still burn fat. You won’t burn it as fast as somebody dedicated to burning fat, but you will definitely out last those who try to slim down using crash diets.

Another benefit of eating less is preparing less. Cooking these days is hard enough with all the other distractions and chores life holds, but having to cook a 3 course meal in these rushed times is crazy – hence the fall back of fast-food.

Instead of making all that food, just make up one or maybe two of the items. Let’s stay you like steak and potatoes – who doesn’t, right? Grill a nice steak – trim all the big pieces of fat off – and make up some mashed potatoes. But instead of butter, try a little olive oil and some skim milk instead. Add lots of fresh ground pepper and a little salt (if you really must) and you’ll find them quite tasty. The olive oil is 100% fat, but it’s high quality and healthy – just go easy on the portion size. Just don’t use olive oil for cooking, as heating it to cooking temperatures kills it.

In the meal above, omit any bread, drink water or tea - a teaspoon of sugar is only 15 calories, so stay away from dangerous and foul tasting sugar substitutes – and skip the dessert. Have the dessert a few hours later and eat half what you normally might.

You can safely add vegetables if you like since they are low in calories and high in macronutrients. Steam up some carrots and try them plain or with a dash of salt.

Since you know now it’s not so much what you eat but how much, start to keep track of how many calories you take in. Based on this, you can control your portion size.

Will this give you a perfect body and 6-pack abs? No, it won’t. For most people, this would require more dedication, harder exercise and serious control over the mix of calories – carbs, fats and proteins – that are eaten.

But it’s a great way to start and as you go along you’ll realize that a pizza once a while is not what makes you fat, it’s the large pizza 3 times a week that really does the damage.