Low Carbohydrate Diet Plan

Low Carbohydrate Nutrition Lifestyle

How To Start

Decrease your intake of carbohydrates; examples are bread, pasta, potatoes, corn, rice, sugar and high fructose corn syrup. Try simply eating the most common carbohydrates in your diet half as much. For all of you interested in counting calories, try to reduce your carbohydrate intake such that carbs account for only 30% of your total daily calorie intake.
Start making changes gradually and don’t get over whelmed. Focus on making 7 of 21 meals per week low carbohydrate. Start with breakfast or lunch. Once you get the hang of this try to include another meal in the day. Slowly try to discover newer food choices that you enjoy eating and can incorporate into your eating habits over the long term.
Adapting new foods and eating habits that can be continued over the long term is an essential component to keeping your weight off permanently.
Don’t start thinking ‘all carbohydrates are dangerous’. You want to achieve a lower intake of carbohydrates not to try to completely eliminate them.

What to Eat

Eat plenty of protein 3 times daily - this improves muscle metabolism and helps suppress you appetite.
Eat plenty of vegetables; the majority are relatively low in carbohydrates (except potatoes and corn) and the fiber they contain helps to stretch your stomach and reduce your hunger.
Remember, eating fat does not increase your cholesterol or triglycerides. It’s excessive body weight and carbohydrate intake that primarily causes these to be elevated. Weight loss and carbohydrate reduction will improve your cholesterol and triglycerides levels. The old ‘low fat’ eating patterns can actually be unhealthy for many individuals because it often results in elevated carbohydrate intakes of 30% on average.
If having pasta or bread, try to be sure the label says “whole grain _____” (wheat, oats, etc), and does not include any other type of flour in addition.
When craving something sweet, eat fresh fruit instead of cakes, ice cream or donuts.
Drink water, unsweetened tea or coffee instead of soda or fruit juices. Minimize your intake of diet drinks or sweeteners as these have been shown to increase the hunger in animals.

Keep Things In Perspective

And remember, we want you to be able to decrease your carbohydrate intake but still enjoy the important moments in life; so don’t worry about cutting carbohydrates when you’re eating out with family or special friends. Just be sensible but be certain to enjoy yourself. There are many other meals in the week where you can reduce carbohydrates.
If you do a good job on trimming back the carbohydrates elsewhere, you can still enjoy some carbohydrates during these special meals with friends and family.

Meal Examples

Breakfast - Eggs and bacon or turkey sausage, a protein shake or left over chicken or meat from the night before. A good portion of protein in the morning helps increase your muscle mass as well as helps suppress your appetite throughout the day. Limit breakfast cereals, oatmeal, toast, hash browns and juice; these are all carbohydrates.
Lunch - Be sure to include plenty of protein: eat sandwich meats, cheese slices, tuna, cold chicken breast, hard boiled egg; avoid the bread that commonly is part of lunch.
Dinner - Start with a salad; dark green vegetables are an important source of vitamins and minerals and help decrease your hunger by stretching your stomach. Have a vegetable side dish other than corn or potato (remeber, we feed corn to cattle to make them fat!). Eat any protein you want such as beans, chicken, steak, hamburger, turkey, pork chops, shrimp or fish. Its hard to overeat protein because it is so effective at reducing our hunger.
Dessert - If you crave something sweet, eat fresh fruit.

Exercise Regimen for Weight Loss Program

Try to exercise for the equivalent of 30 min. of brisk walking 5-6 days per week. (3 hours of exercise per week). This can be in the form of yoga, walking, swimming, stretching or light resistance exercise.
Caution: vigorous exercise regimens such as weight lifting and intense cardiovascular workouts can increase you appetite thereby making it harder to lose weight. Wait until you get better control over eating before increasing the exercise.