As an instinct what is the first step you take to shed some kilos?
Following the few of the mistakes commonly made by individuals in their fat loss journey:
- Reduce Fat intake drastically to reduce calories intake
- Reduce Food Intake reducing the calorie intake
- Restricting some of the high calorie food ingredients thereby reducing calories
While all the above steps might be true there is a downside to each of them. Lets discuss them.
- Reducing Fat drastically can often lead to nutrient deficiency. There are a lot of nutrients that need fat to get absorbed in the body and hence reducing the oil and replacing it with fat rich foods like nuts, seeds can be a good idea to strike a balance between low calorie and yet maintain high nutrition.
- Restricting the overall quantity of food can often create nutrition deficiency majorly because individuals tend to stress on quantity over quality. This may be shortlived due to hunger pangs and also cause metabolism to slow down further.
- When an individual goes on a diet, the first thing he removes is food ingredients that are high in calorie for eg. banana, potatoes, fruits, rice. But what they forget is the unique nutrition profile being deleted due to the avoidance of that food ingredient.
So how can you keep low calorie still get maximum nutrition and still lose fat?
- Replace food packets (items made in machines, processed) with natural food ingredients. In the name of so called health product, we tend to overlook everything else. This aspect covers more than 50% of the failures in following a nutritious healthy diet.
- Replace Creams and Oils with Nuts, Seeds. Use items like nut pastes, coconuts and peanuts to enhance the taste.
- Replace dressings with various chutneys and spices
- Making and consuming homemade paneer and curd. Most of the dairy products available outside is made from some milk but lot of milk solids to create volume. Do not fall in the trap
- Not overdoing food substitutes just because they are healthier eg. sugar and jaggery. As rightly said “anything in excess can be harmful”
- Get enough sunlight. One of the major reasons why individuals suffer with high cholesterol and high fat content is Vitamin D Deficiency.
The above pointers are a great basework to start with if your goal is to improve your nutrition composition. Couple them with some common sense and exercise and you are good to go!!