Weight Loss. What to Eat - Part 2

You might wonder, how to know how much calories in certain foods so that we can have proper diet in our weight loss program. There are many books for that. You can search and buy them from amazon.com for instance. Or, if you prefer to get the information online, I recommend this link.

Okay, calorie is the most important thing to consider in our weight loss program. But once again, we should plan our diet/food well so that our body will still get all the vitamins and nutrients it needs.

Our body needs about 0.5-1 gram protein per pound of body weight daily, depending on our level of activity. 1 gram of protein roughly contains 4 calories. So if we eat 100 grams of proteins, our body will get about 400 calories.

We need also to consume fats, much preferably good fat (unsaturated fat). There is also bad fat (saturated fat) that we should avoid because it is very bad for our health. This bad fat can be found on all junk foods while good fat are from fish, olive oil, nuts, etc. About 30% of the calories we need should be supplied by these good fats. A gram of fat contains about 9 calories.

The rest of the calories can be obtained through carbs containing foods such as
beans, brown rice, oatmeal, fruit and vegetables, etc. One gram of carbs contains roughly 4 calories. But also remember that like fat, there is also good (complex carbs) and bad carbs (simple carbs). Bad carbs are often found in typical junk foods and candies. White bread is also full of bad carbs, so it is much better to eat whole grain bread instead. Cookies, chips, pretzels, and sugary drinks are also sources of these bad carbs.