Bbq Foods You Should Choose If You Want To Lose Weight

Eat More, Lose More, If You Plan Your Eating Ahead of Time

If you are exercising more and eating less to lose weight, your body is constantly lowering your metabolic rate so that your body needs less energy and more readily stores excess calories as fat. It only takes about three days for your metabolic set point to be lowered so have to diet even harder to keep losing weight.

Summer barbecues are a perfect way to avoid this problem. Here is an example.

Suppose you maintain weight when you eat 2200 calories (kcal) a day, and you have decided to lose 1 pound a week by eating 1700 calories a day. The first few days you stick to your 1700 calorie a day diet you have some water weight loss and you also lose half a pound of fat.

Your body, however, reacts to your decreased food consumption as signal you are starving, so it slows down your metabolism. The change is probably very slight. Instead of needing to eat 2200 calories a day to avoid gaining weight, for example, after a few days of dieting you may just need to eat 2150 calories a day. After a couple weeks of dieting, maybe it's 2100 or 2050 calories a day.

The net effect, however, is that it gets harder and harder to lose weight and easier and easier to put it all back. The solution is to loosen up and enjoy food every few days.

Suppose instead of trying to lose one pound a week by reducing calorie consumption by 500 calories each every day, you ate less on some days and more on others?

Instead of a pattern of eating:

• Monday, 1700 calories
• Tuesday, 1700 calories
• Wednesday, 1700 calories
• Thursday, 1700 calories
• Friday, 1700 calories
• Saturday, 1700 calories
• Sunday, 1700 calories

You might try:

• Monday, 1500 calories
• Tuesday, 1500 calories
• Wednesday, 2100 calories
• Thursday, 1500 calories
• Friday, 1200 calories
• Saturday, 2500 calories
• Sunday 1700 calories

Interrupting the pattern of your diet sends your body a message that you are not starving and it does not need to slow your metabolism. And if you indulge in protein foods for those extra calories on your "feeding days," you get an extra benefit.

If your body gets all the amino acids it needs from the protein you eat, it turns the excess amino acids into glucose. The process of making glucose this way is inefficient. It will not, unless you are diabetic, raise your blood sugar levels, but all of the calories in protein do not become sugar. Some are wasted in the process of digestion.

However, because this process takes a day or two, your metabolism does not get a signal it needs to slow down. You get the same effect on your metabolic rate by eating extra carbs on your "feeding days," but you get a boost to weight loss if you eat extra protein rather than extra carbs or fat.

So don't hover by the bean sprouts when you go to summer barbecues. Go ahead and have the protein foods you enjoy, without eating huge quantities of them. They won't put on extra weight. In fact, they will help take it off. But can you trust yourself not to eat too much?

Can You Trust Yourself Not to Eat Too Much?

Many studies have found that people who are overweight or obese now, or who were overweight or obese in the past, tend to underestimate how much they eat. The studies don't really tell us whether people underestimate how much they eat and then they get fat, or if people get fat and then they lose their ability to keep track of food. But the simple fact is that you will lose weight a lot more easily and keep it off a lot longer if you have somebody else doing the calorie counting for you.

You don't have to have somebody counting each and every calorie for you.

Suppose you have decided that the way you are going to eat 1700 calories a day to lose weight is by eating one frozen dinner, one sandwich that is made the same way every time at a restaurant you like, and by drinking a diet shake a day. If you find yourself getting hungry, you will eat a salad or a piece of fruit.

Many people find that this approach is an optimum way to lose weight. They get almost the same calories every day, and they don't let themselves "starve." Filling up on plant foods most days will kill your appetite so you don't go out foraging for burgers, fried chicken, or tasty meat pies.

You can vary this approach by following your normal diet most days, maybe skipping part of your diet plan some days, and then eating what you like at social events. This actually helps your metabolism stay running high and it also relieves you of peer pressure that leaves you feeling that you have been "dragged off" your diet. You stay in control.

You just allow the people who make prepared dinners or sandwiches to do most of your calorie counting, making occasional exceptions for social events.

This approach does not take off as much weight as extreme low-calorie diets during the first six months, but most people who practically stop eating also stop losing weight after a few months. By the end of a year, people who eat a varied diet they plan, with some room for spontaneous choices at special events that you have "earned" the right to eat by eating less earlier, have lost weight and kept it off. Most crash dieters gain their weight back.

Barbecues are a great way to keep up your metabolism, enjoy food and company, and continue to lose weight. There is no food served at a barbecue that will "ruin" your diet, and eating moderately more than usual (up to 6 oz./ 170 g more meat than usual and maybe a little more alcohol and carbs) won't hurt if you plan. Don't leave a party feeling deprived!

Barbecues give you chances to prove your self-control and to show yourself that you can continue to lose weight without fixating on foods. Almost any barbecue choice can be a weight loss choice if you just decide what you are going to eat ahead of time and "pay for it" by harder dieting the day before.