The Most Important Tips before Starting a Weight Loss Program Part 1

You may be looking to lose weight either for health reasons or to improve your appearance, whatever the reason you will most likely be looking for tips or advice on how to get started. Tips and advice are things that are not in short supply and this article will highlight a number of them that will definitely help you in your quest to lose weight.

Eat the right things!

Number one on the list must be to eat healthily. Eating healthily means watching and monitoring exactly what you eat and not necessarily how much you eat. You could in reality end up eating more than you were before starting your diet by swapping junk foods that contain high levels of calories with fruits and vegetables that are what are classed as negative foods (foods that contain fewer calories than are used to digest them!).

One of the first things you should do when looking at improving your diet is to learn a little about the foods that are good for you and those that are not. We have already mentioned those that are good for you; the negative calorie group of foods, their opposites the bad foods, often referred to as junk foods, are the foods that take fewer calories to digest than they contain, therefore they leave unused calories in the body, that if left unused will turn into fat. These foods are known as empty calorie foods and must be either limited and controlled or eliminated from your diet completely. It is a drastic step to look at completely eliminating them from your diet so limitation is probably the favored option.

Plan your meals to be as varied as possible.

In order to succeed in your diet change it is advisable to vary your meal plans as much as possible to avoid the drudgery that is often associated with a change to a low fat or healthier diet. The easiest way to find out information related to healthy foods and recipes is to look for it on the internet. One valuable piece of advice would be to find a good weight loss program that utilizes a method called calorie shifting.

Low calorie and fad diets should be avoided as they are all detrimental to your health!

Any diet that forces the body's metabolism to go into starvation mode is a bad diet as it will lead to fatigue, illness and a poor immune system. This bodily reaction happens because the body eventually gets used to the level of calories being consumed and over time adapts to survive at this newer lower level of calorific intake. This in itself is ok, but should the intake of calories drop below that which the body requires to function normally and to carry out normal day to day tasks the body will start to burn fat in order to service its needs. The problem is that the body will become critically low in energy and as a result you will be constantly fatigued, this is a fundamental sign of starvation, and that is not a good thing!

In the second part of this article we take a look at Calorie shifting, exercise and goal setting all vital to your weight loss plan.