Please read my very practical article on keeping the weight off, and don’t forget to check out the links at the bottom and find the most interesting information and offers on the internet today!

Keeping The Weight Off - The Basics

There are healthy and unhealthy ways to lose weight. I may go into this subject a bit more in another article but for now I would like to concentrate on keeping the weight off once you have lost it - regardless of how you lost it.

Since I am Dutch myself, and the audience reading this article will probably be from around the globe, I will not be too specific about which products to eat/drink or not because names or brands may be totally different where you live. I hope the general information I give you will be useful nonetheless. If you do have any specific questions, please feel free to contact me via the e-mail address provided on my site.

It is important not to weaken yourself by eating too much or too little; and people who are serious about losing weight, and keeping it off, often eat too little. Perhaps not in volume, but their bodies receive too little of the building blocks they need to function properly.

Let me give you a few simple things to consider after you have stopped dieting.

1. You need to eat, but you need to eat the right things.

Know what you eat - read the labels of the products you intend to buy and check for a few key ingredients:

- fat
- sugar
- protein
- fibres
- calcium

Fat

If there is more than 10% fat in a product, you need to reconsider buying it - especially if a large part is saturated fat. Check other similar products, and you will usually find one with less than 10% fat if you take the time to look.

Sugar

I do not need to explain to you that chocolate and candy contain too much sugar. However, you will also find large percentages of sugar in many other products. (Check a few popular yoghurt drinks for instance and prepare to be shocked!) It is simply not healthy to eat a lot of sugar, so the less the better in this case. The best products are the ones that have no sugar added at all and only use the natural sugar that was already in the ingredients (like fruits or vegetables). And even then, there are a few naturally sweet products that should not be eaten too often, like carrots for instance.

Protein

Protein is a very important building block for your muscles. If you get too little protein (and especially combined with too much sugar) your body will feel weak and tired and you may even be tempted to start eating more to crank up your energy level. Simply eating more will not help - again, you need to eat but you need to eat the right things!

Fibres

Fibres are very important to keep your bowels moving and help process your foods. A lot of products that say they are fibre-rich, in fact are not so rich if you check the labels. I eat one particular cracker for breakfast that contains 24% of fibre (24 grams per 100 grams) and that I do call a fibre-rich cracker! Not all crackers need to contain that much fibre of course, but when they are advertised as being fibre-rich and upon checking the label you see that the percentage of fibre is only 4%, I would not buy it, at least not for the fibres. Only if it tastes really good! And we still can eat things simply because they are so yummy - as long as we don't lose sight of how much we are getting of those key ingredients.

Calcium

We have all been taught calcium is great for our bones. But again, many products that claim to be rich in calcium aren't so rich at all. Read the labels and compare, and do not forget to check the sugar percentage as well, especially in drinks and cookies. Calcium is good but if it means putting a lot of sugar into your body as well, you may want to look for an alternative product.

2. Limit the times you eat to 6 times a day.

While I was dieting, I was advised to eat 'only' 6 times a day. Pretty soon I noticed how much I had gotten used to eating things in between. A cookie here, a little piece of chocolate there, a sugar-rich drink - they may all be small bites but they do add up. Eating 3 big meals and nothing in between is not healthy either. Your body will have too much food to process at once when you eat, and too little afterwards. Making the main meals a bit smaller and compensating with 3 other eating moments results in a much healthier system. When choosing the meals and the things you eat in between, don't forget to check for those key ingredients. Make sure you eat 2 pieces of fruit daily - an orange makes for a great snack, it is big and sweet and full of vitamins.

3. Forbidden products.

The products I am going to list for you here are not 'forbidden' literally, but I was not allowed to eat them when I was dieting because they are so full of calories. So be careful with: potatoes (in any form), carrots, beets, brown beans, white beans, peas / pea soup, corn, bananas, grapes, pears, avocado, peaches, white rice and white pasta. In stead of white rice, use brown rice and in stead of white pasta, use whole grain products.

4. Be kind to your liver.

This was actually an eye-opener for me. The most important processing organ in the human body is the liver. In fact, it is THE fat burner, which converts food into energy to fuel your body. But if you drink too much coffee and/or alcohol and eat a lot of pre-processed foods (containing artificial flavour, colour, conservatives, chemical sweeteners and so on) you put a heavy burden on your liver. It will constantly be working to get rid of the coffee, alcohol and chemicals and will not have time to burn body fat. You can do everything right but if you liver does not get a chance to break down fats, you will not lose weight or keep it off, no matter what you do. Try not to drink more than 2-3 cups of coffee a day, be a modest drinker of alcohol and drink lots of water - and watch for chemicals you really do not need in your system - there are always alternatives.

Finally a note about pig meat: I invite you to do a search for why pig meat is unhealthy. You will find some articles written by people with extreme views but try to filter out the scientific arguments. For one, the cholesterol in pig meat is massive. Another argument that kind of sums it up for me is this one: pigs have a detox system that does not work as well as ours, which is why they will store waste in their fatty tissues in stead of getting rid of it. After eating pig meat, our system will have to deal with the toxins. Who needs that additional burden?

I hope this article will be of use to you in your quest to keep those extra pounds away. Want to know more? Please click here and find a site that is jam-packed with great information and tons of recipes for a healthy life style. It is amazingly comprehensive, I have not finished reading myself.

Thanks for reading.

Anneke Kroodsma.

Very valuable information, available FREE for a limited time!

The Diet Solution Program

An interesting, original approach to losing weight - just check out the video and see
if it appeals to you.

EODD - the Every Other Day Diet by Jon Benson

More to follow soon on other topics!