Diet vs. Meal Plan, continued…

Last time I spoke about why I think diets don’t work and why I like to go with what I call a meal plan to either lose weight or main­tain.  I don’t think it is very hard to develop a meal plan.  It takes the abil­ity to read and under­stand the nutri­tion labels as well as the abil­ity to con­trol portions.  

Por­tion con­trol is key!  By aver­ag­ing 300 calo­ries 5 to 6 times a day (depend­ing on how much you have to lose and your cur­rent body makeup) cou­pled with exer­cise, you will kick your metab­o­lism into overdrive.  

There are some foods you can eas­ily find in your local gro­cery store.  Eggs, Old Fash­ion Oat­meal (not the fla­vored packet kind that is loaded with sugar) and Peanut But­ter all have parts in my Meal Plan.  Peanut But­ter makes a great mid morn­ing and mid after­noon snack.  Two table­spoons by itself does the trick for me.  

Peo­ple I work with make fun of me for it, but it works.  It keeps me sati­ated so I’m not hit­ting the vend­ing machine for a bag of chips.  It is also a food that is bal­anced in pro­tein, fat and car­bo­hy­drates.  But remem­ber, por­tion con­trol is key.  I can’t stress that enough.  The only down­side to Peanut But­ter is that it has unsat­u­rated fat, so too much Peanut But­ter can work against you.  

You may have to cut back on the size of the por­tions you nor­mally have for Lunch and Din­ner.  Din­ner is actu­ally my small­est meal.  By that time of day I’m not usu­ally very hungry.  

And what about the per­son on the go?  There is one fast food place I will rec­om­mend, and that is Sub­way. I know, I know, when you hear Sub­way you think of Jared and his commercials…please stop laugh­ing.  But when I was devel­op­ing my Meal Plan 3 years ago, I found that sev­eral of their 6″ inch sand­wiches fit in per­fectly and there was a Sub­way right around the cor­ner from where I work.  They post all the nutri­tional infor­ma­tion online, so you can see not just how many calo­ries, but all the nutri­tional information.  

One word of advice, be care­ful of condi­ments, they can be a killer and can sab­o­tage your efforts.

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