Tips to Keep Eating Delicious Foods Without Gaining Too Much Weight
I never do strict diet, like ever. How can I be when I live in (and always travel to) Asia, particularly in Indonesia, where delicious and exotic foods are everywhere? For example like pecel lele (fried catfish with fresh lettuces, cucumbers, and tomatoes). I always mix it with my modified recipe of Sambal Papua (a mixture with lots of chilli kinds, shallot, garlic, and terasi). No one in the house (I am included) can stand for it. At least, we will eat twice at the lunch time. I don't mention any other foods I can't resist like rendang, asam pedas, sambal penyet, and moooooore.....
Well, some people may think that it's not a kind of healthy lifestyle I live on. Too much fat and cholesterol meals, perhaps. But I am always sure that everything is on your mind. When you're happy and feeling grateful with the dish, your meals will turn into something good in your body. It's not necessary to overthink yourself with what the food calories will do to your body shape.
Gorgeous, but at least I can share my experience to you. It works on me. I can enjoy delicious foods every time without gaining weight excessively.
Don't Skip Your Breakfast
I often find people skip the breakfast time for a "fear to be huge" reason. You're totally wrong! In fact, breakfast helps to control weight gain by reducing appetite, so you don't want to eat much on your lunch because you feel your stomach is already full.
What I always have for breakfast is fresh milk. Some people may prefer skimmed or low-fat milk. Some even choose soy-milk. But I think if you don't have problems with metabolism, allergies, and others, fresh milk is the best option. Besides it contains more complex and higher nutrition, fresh milk gives you more energy and of course the "full-stomach" sensation which leads to hunger decreased.
In my experience, a cup of fresh milk (approximately 200 ml) is sufficient enough for you. I sometimes serve it like fresh milk with two sunny side up/boiled eggs, fresh milk with a banana, fresh milk with an apple, or fresh milk with tuna/egg sandwich. Since I do this trick, I can say I loss my craving on food (although it doesn't perform at all on my favorite foods, LOL). I eat only in a small portion just to not starve myself. I often only have apple or almonds with fresh juice for my dinner. And voila, I successfully manage my weight in the same number for weeks. Sometimes it reduces one kilogram per 1-2 weeks.
Maintain Your Workout Routine
Sports and exercises are good to loss weight. But too much workouts is never good for fat-loss.
Muscles have procedural memory that will be remembered by the brain through repetition. Every time you repeat the same procedure on your workout, the procedural memory will restore and brain will inform muscles that you have done this workout before. If at first you felt so exhausted doing five times sit-up, through the time you'll feel get used to it.
When muscles (and brain) are already familiar with the movements, it means you need to increase your performance, or the exercises will be useless. If you do sit-up five times a day in a week, then the next week you must escalate it to 10 times, so then your muscles will learn new skill and boost your metabolism higher.
But you must remember, brain and muscles also need time to learn this new skill more effectively, so that your result will be better. The secret for doing workout is, do exercise for three days in a row and take a break on the 4th day. Then you can continue again for the next three days, and rest again for a day after that.
What you can do during your rest day? EATING, definitely! After hard works, your body deserve to be spoiled. To maintain your physical fitness, don't push yourself too much beyond your limit. Just give your body a break.
Anyway Gorgeous, the most important thing is to appreciate your body no matter what is shaped. Don't make a weight loss as an ultimate goal so that you will do anything which possibly could harm your body just to be slim. Preserve the weight just to conduct your healthiness.
Love,
Elle Zahra