How I Lost 10 Pounds - Diet Plan Changes (PART 2)

Today's post is going to be the second part of my "fitness journey story" ...

Calories vs. Nutritional Values
When I started working out, I was interested in calories. I believed that fact I read on so many sites on the internet - you just need to burn more calories than is your calories intake. So I tried to guess at least the calories of every single meal I ate. I don't mena that I limited myself somehow. That never happened and that will probably never happen in future. (Why? Because I just like food, fullstop.) That way I just apologized all the chocolate bars and cookies I ate - I just though that when the bar has 200 calories, it can cover the calories intake for snack and so I will just eat that bar and nothing else between the breakfast and lunch and my diet will be still healthy.

Nonsense.

Not every hundered calories are same. And if you eat half of milk chocolate it will affect you different way than when you eat a big bowl full of fruit. The calories are not the only thing you should care about, the other nutritional values are much more imporant. Some food, regardless of their energetic value and fat, speed up the metabolism and instead of gaining weight, they burn fat. For example the peanut mutter that has over 600 calories per 100 grams and has a lot of fat can sound a bit scary. But if you don't eat it just with tablespoons every day (I admit I do this sometimes), it will help you burn more fat because of the healthy fats.

So I became interested more in the composition and its healthy benefits than focusing on calories and fat. Because of that I lost my interest to some types of food, because it scares me that we eat products containing so much chemicals whose names we aren't even able to spell. Do you know what is Ponceau 4R or tertiary butyl hydroquinone ? I have no idea. The only thing I know is that these chemicals cause serious allergic reactions, headaches, stomach ache, they are carcinogenic and through it all we can find them in ordinary products like dairy, jams, chips or dried fruit ...

It also completed me to stop drinking sweetened drinks (cola, sprite, sodas, sweetened juices, syrups) - the "high calories" ones as well as the "light" versions. The first ones contain crazy amount of cugar and the "diet" ones contain usually aspartame (instead of sugars) that is a sweetener that may cause brain cancer.



Cutting out wheat
I saw the biggest change on my body after I cut out the pastry and other food containing wheat. I'm not so bloated, I lost the fat around my hips and belly and I lost some pounds too.

Thing of normal croissant - it contains only empty calories, fat and it has completely no nutritional value. Okay, most of people who are trying to lose weight or eat healthy don't eat croissants. But what about the "dark" wholewheat pastry, müsli, pasta, couscous ... ? Altough these products may sound "healthy", they are not much better than the croissant. Personally I completely avoid the wheat. I don't eat any pastry, only rice cakes and 100% rye bread (sometimes the rye pastry is made also 50/50 with wheat) sometimes. I've always loved müsli, but it contains wheat flakes and wheat flour. Instead of the processed one I make homemade müsli with oat flakes, honey and peanut butter. I try to eat only rice pasta and I replace the wheat couscous with quinoa.

Eating more
Paradoxically I eat more since my diet plan change. I used to eat just a fruit yogurt or some sweet pastry for breakfast. Today I would be still hungry after eating this, instead of that I have a big bowl of oatmeal with a lot of fruit. How much you eat is not as important as what you eat.

WHAT I ACTUALLY (DON'T) EAT
To sum it up, here is a sample list of what I eat and what I avoid.

• fresh and dried fruit
•  vegetables
• legumes
• oats, buckwheat, millet, quinoa 
• plant-based milk
• nuts
• honey
• peanut butter
• dark chocolate
• goat milk
• seeds
• rice cakes and pasta
• fish

• wheat pastry and pasta (and sweets)
• rafined sugar
• sweetened sodas
• müsli and other breakfast cereals
• milk chocolate
• chips
• sausages and ham
• flavored dairy products
• fried food
• cow milk

START RIGHT NOW

You don't need personal trainer or expensive sport equipment to start working out. You don't need magical pills to start losing weight. You don't need diet plan made by dietologist to start eating healthy. You just need to know, that you really want it and you need to be willing to invest your time and your energy. The main thing you need to achieve your goals is determination, strong will and intrinsic motivation. I have no doubt that you will find it. I'm not saying that you won't meet any problem, that one day you will just wake up, start your new lifestyle and never make any mistake again. I'm not saying it's easy. But definitely it's possible. AND YOU CAN DO IT!

Wish you luck on your way to fitness ! <3