Finding and Maintaining a Low-Fat Diet

You might think that a low-fat diet is kind of redundant. Aren’t all diets supposedly low in fat? That might have been true ten years ago, but today you have diets like the South Beach Diet and the Atkins Diet, neither of which is primarily concerned with lowering fat intake. However, a low-fat diet is a great way to lose weight because calories from fat are almost never burned constructively and simply stay in your body as stored fat. Furthermore, a low-fat diet is a great lifestyle. No matter how you lose your weight, a low-fat diet is instrumental in keeping it off.

One of the biggest keys to getting on a low-fat diet is this simple rule: never make exceptions. This doesn’t mean that you can never indulge in something that is high in fat. What it does mean is that you need to set a plan and stick to it. Plans are pretty much worthless if you don’t stick to them. If you’re a big fan of ice cream and you tell yourself that you’re allowed one bowl of ice cream a week, don’t have two bowls of ice cream in one week. Doing it once will make it easier to do the next time, and the next time, which will lead to a vicious cycle that will have you eating ice cream every night.

Another key to a low-fat diet is to eliminate aspects of your diet that are just unreasonably high in fat. Butter and mayonnaise are both 80% fat or more, and they aren’t even delicious stand alone foods like ice cream! Just tell yourself that you won’t have these and other similar products. Replace butter with a low-fat, natural margarine and replace mayonnaise with mustard or just eliminate it altogether. This will be a good start towards getting yourself on a low-fat diet and won’t change the foods you can eat very much at all.

While replacing condiments and other small but high-fat items is a good start, you also need to eliminate or reduce your intake of high fat meals. For instance, if you eat a lot of red meat, you should probably cut back some. Replace some of your meat meals with fish. Fish offers more vitamins, minerals, and essential oils and also has a lot less fat. If you eat dessert with two meals a day (lunch and dinner), but that done to just one dessert a day and replace the other dessert with a piece of fruit. Small reductions in fat intake in a number of different areas will add up quickly and get your fat intake down to a more desired level.

Finally, make sure you don’t completely eliminate fat from your diet. Some people can take the idea to an extreme, eliminating even the necessary amount of fat from their diets. The body needs certain fatty acids. If you reduce your fat intake effectively and maintain that reduction, you’ll lose weight and keep it off for the long haul.

More Dieting Tips: Green Tea and Dieting