It does your body good to eat healthy at each and every meal. Eating a healthy meal translates to a healthier and a happy you. It is also an excellent way to maintain healthy weight. As the old saying goes, you really are what you eat. An unhealthy high sugar diet not only leads to weight gain, it also makes the body susceptible to many degenerative ailments we see these days.
When I gave birth to my daughter, my mum came to help out with the baby. In our culture, women are forced to eat as much as they can right after giving birth. It is, according to the ones who came before us, supposed to increase the milk for the baby as well as help the ‘bones to go back to normal’. Unfortunately for me, my mum is no different. Her biggest fear was that I’d come out of the house after the first six weeks looking all emaciated and starved and that would shame her. According to her, I needed to come out looking like someone had been taking care of me.

With the new baby waking up every two hours, I had little energy left in me to put up a fight. And eat I did, if only to silence her. Needless to say, I ended up gaining weight faster than I had when I was pregnant. I was also very moody and depressed for the first few months. Though I finally managed to shed it all though exercise and eating healthy meals, it took me longer than necessary. I should have had smaller more frequent meals to keep my metabolism up while providing the baby with enough milk to nourish her.

As I later learnt, one needs not break a bank to eat healthy. Like the diet plan below will prove, eating healthy need not be an impossible undertaking. You can also do it  and lose some pounds while at it.

Avoid zero Calorie diet plans that promise weight lose in just a week

No matter how desperate to lose weight you are, you should never crash diet. This may increase the pace at which you achieve your goal of being slim, but the success is only temporary.  The weight lost is the water weight, the muscle weight and of course some of the fat. The reason why fad diets don’t work is because when the dieting period is over, the weight comes right back on. You might even end up weighing more than before.

It is not bad to have a large portion of your meals consists of negative calorie foods as long as you ensure that you’re taking a balanced diet. Negative calorie foods are foods that use up more calories to have them digested that they actually provide. Celery is a great example. The fibered stringy vegetable is very low in caloric count and takes a long time to get digested making you feel fully a lot longer. Eating a balanced diet ensures that you have the energy necessary to keep your metabolism high, you get the protein for repair, and the vitamins that boost your immunity.

How to lose weight fast with a healthy meal plan for a week

Portion control is very important when it comes to losing weight fast through a diet plan. Understanding the right portion size is the fist step. A good rule of thumb when it comes to your protein needs like when eating meat/poultry/fish is to choose a portion size equivalent to size of a deck of cards. If it looks too large, it probably is. You don’t have to waste your food. You can have it packaged and eat it when you get home. With time, your mind, body and stomach will get used to the adjusted portions. This is crucial when it comes to following through a meal plan.

Below is a diet plan with healthy meals for a week from ultimatepaleoguide.

Image Source: ultimatepaleoguide.com