4 Diet Changes to Lose Weight & Reclaim Your Health

At a Glance

Any diet that helps you lose weight and reclaim your health must include these 4 changes.
Drink more water throughout the day
Make every effort to avoid sugar
Eliminate most processed foods
Switch from refined (white) starchy foods to whole grain foods

Do you want to lose weight and reclaim your health but don’t know where to start? All the diets and weight loss plans out there can be overwhelming. How do you know what to choose? No diet is the best for everybody. We are all different. What works best for your friend may not work at all for you. With so many options, it can be a daunting task to decide which diet to follow.

While there are many approaches to losing weight and improving health, any diet that will produce lasting results will include the four changes I’ll cover in this article. You may even achieve your goals by doing nothing more than following these recommendations, although other healthy habits such as eating more slowly, increasing vegetable intake, and getting more exercise will help you reach your goals faster. I cover other other things you should know before starting a new diet in this article.

Drink More Water

You’ve probably heard the recommendation to drink 64 ounces of water a day (about a half gallon). To be perfectly honest, I haven’t found any research that supports that rule. Our bodies are about 60% water, so it’s obvious that water is important. But we get water from food and other beverages. Below are some foods that are over 90% water

Celery
Cucumber
Grapefruit
Iceberg Lettuce
Spinach
Strawberries
Tomatoes
Watermelon

So how do you know how much to consume? Listen to your body. If you’re thirsty, drink water. If you’re hungry, drink water first. Sometimes our bodies get the two signals mixed up. Your hunger may really be thirst. If you’re well hydrated, your urine should be a light yellow or clear. Even though there are exceptions to this, it’s a good rule of thumb. If your urine is darker, drink water.

Drinking more water with meals is also a good weight loss strategy because it helps you eat less. You can either drink a full glass of water right before you eat or drink water throughout your meal. By the time you finish eating, your water glass should be empty, and you will feel full faster.

Pro Tip: Start by replacing soft drinks and juices with water. You will be better hydrated, and you will go a long way toward making the next important change.

Cut Way Back On Sugar

The average US citizen consumes 19.5 teaspoons of sugar a day. That’s over 120 POUNDS OF SUGAR per person per year! Excessive sugar consumption is a major contributor to the health crisis we see in much of the western world. Diabetes, metabolic syndrome, high cholesterol, heart disease, and other lifestyle illnesses are linked to eating too much sugar. You will never be able to lose weight or reclaim your health until you significantly decrease your sugar intake. Check out this site for more alarming statistics about sugar consumption.

Of all the changes I recommend in this article, this may be the hardest to make. First, sugar is addictive. If you cut way back or cut it out completely, you will probably crave it like crazy for a while. Second, sugar is added to much of what we eat. It will sneak into your diet if you aren’t constantly vigilant. It will be tough, but if you can get your sugar intake down to about 15 grams a day or less, you will consume about 12 pounds per year instead of 75 pounds. That’s a big difference.

How to Decrease Sugar Intake and Reclaim Your Health

Substitute natural sweeteners. Don’t use artificial sweeteners because they can mess up the hormones that regulate hunger and actually make you want to eat more. This article covers 8 natural sweeteners that can replace sugar. Experiment with them to find which ones give you the best taste profile.

Eat whole fruit instead of juice. Sugars are concentrated in fruit juices. Whole fruits contain fiber that slows the absorption of sugar. By eating the whole fruit, you will also consume less sugar than the juice.

Read nutritional labels. Look for foods that have no sugar added and for those that have a low sugar content. It might mean that you spend a little longer in the grocery store, but it will pay off. Also avoid foods with corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, dried cane syrup, molasses, brown rice syrup, maple syrup, or honey. These are all sources of sugar.

Substitute healthy snacks for sugary snacks. That doesn’t mean you have to give up your favorite treats altogether. Just try eating them much less often like once a week instead of 5 or 6 times a week.

Find alternatives to sodas. If you drink a lot of soda, this one change will cut your sugar intake to a fraction of what it is now. Diet sodas with artificial sweeteners aren’t going to help you lose weight. They inhibit the hormones that make you feel satisfied after eating, causing you to eat more. If you don’t want to give up sodas, try some that use Stevia and other natural sugar substitutes.

Add fiber, protein and healthy fats to your diet. All of these will help you feel full longer.

Avoid Processed Foods

When I say processed foods, I’m talking about chemically processed foods. They’re the ones that include those impossible-to-pronounce ingredients on the label. This is almost as hard to do as avoiding sugar. Bad stuff like trans fats, sugars, too much sodium, artificial sweeteners, preservatives, and dyes are common in these types of foods. A lot of this stuff can make it more difficult to lose weight.

Spend most of your time in the grocery store shopping for produce and other basic foods. For some great ideas and recipes using whole foods, check out The World’s Healthiest Foods website.

Switch from Refined Starches to Whole Grain Foods

When a friend of mine was diagnosed with diabetes, his doctor told him that when it comes to food, “white ain’t right”. White pasta, white bread, and white rice are simple starches that contain simple glucose, which causes high spikes in blood glucose, forcing the pancreas to secrete more insulin. Whole grains and legumes contain fiber, which slows down the absorption of glucose.

White potatoes are a little different. If you cook them and put them in the refrigerator overnight, the starches are converted to resistant starch that is broken down by bacteria in the gut and metabolized more slowly. You can reheat them without affecting the resistant starch content. .

Making these four changes in your diet can go a long way to help you lose weight and reclaim your health. If you try to change all these things at once, it will probably be overwhelming and hard to stick with. For most of us, a better approach is to start with small changes and stick with them until they become your new normal. Keep adding one or more small changes at a time and eventually your new diet will become your normal way of eating. It isn’t as fast as other methods, but is more likely to last longer. I cover this process in more detail HERE.