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My next simple natural weight loss tip is: Choose wisely.

Every time you eat, you have the opportunity to make a choice: Eat something that brings me closer to my goals, or something that takes me away from my goal.

I am not just talking about weight loss here, what you eat has a much broader effect on your body (and life) than how much you weigh. What you eat affects how much energy you have, and therefore what you can accomplish every day. It affects your health in many different ways, if you make good choices, you are giving your body optimum nutrition; if you make poor choices, you may be malnourished at many different levels.

To eat well you don’t need to obsess over nutrition, or counting calories. Everybody knows fat and sugar laden processed foods are not good nutrition, and that you can’t overeat at every meal and not have to suffer consequences. And everyone knows that eating a variety of fresh vegetables and fruits every day gives you a rich source of essential nutrients.

It is easy to make the wrong choices about what you eat every day, too many “convenience foods” are full of fat, sugar, and artificial this and that (to fool you into thinking they taste good), and many people feel like they don’t have time to cook real food.

There are many cooking shows that show how you can cook real food without spending a lot of time in the kitchen. Two of my favorites are Jacques Pepin’s Fast Food My Way, and Sara Moulton’s Sara”s Weeknight Meals, both available on PBS. Both of these shows teach you how to prepare real food in less than 30 minutes, if you feel like you don’t have time, (or can’t cook) watch some episodes of these shows, and see how little it takes.

Take some time to cook real food, choose a variety of foods, and you may find that you have more energy, and more fun, too.

Today’s natural weight loss tip is: Choose wisely.

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My next simple natural weight loss tip is: Read.

Read the labels of food products that you buy. The more ingredients, the less likely it is good for you, especially if there are ingredients like hydrogenated or semi-hydrogenated oils or fat, or any ingredients that make you wonder, “What the heck is that?” If you can’t pronounce it, chances are you shouldn’t eat it.If sugar or corn syrup is one of  the first ingredients, it’s not a good choice, as ingredients are listed in order from the most prevalent ingredient to the least. (Here is an example of a good bread label: Whole wheat flour, water, yeast, salt. Here’s an example of one to avoid: White flour, wheat flour, water, high fructose corn syrup, wheat gluten, yeast, salt, dough conditioners, yeast nutrients, reduced iron, niacin, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid, lactic, acetic and fumaric acids, calcium propionate, sodium propionate, vinegar, mono and di-glycerides, soy lecithin, calcium carbonate, polysorbate 60, calcium sulfate,phosphoric acid, azodicarbonamide. I know many of the chemical sounding names here are vitamins and minerals added to “enrich” the flour; what they are actually doing is adding artificial nutrients to replace some of the nutrients refined out. I think the flour is enriched in the same way as if I took your wallet, removed $20.00, put back $8.00 of monopoly money and told you I had enriched you.)

Look for food that is as close to its natural state as possible. Raw vegetables and fruits can add a lot of nutrition to your diet without adding a lot of calories. The best foods to eat when you are dieting are nutrient dense instead of calorie dense.

Make sure to read the ingredient list to be sure transfats are not being hidden by the claim on the front that says “0 trans fats”, since the government in its infinite wisdom allows foods that contain trans fats to make this claim (as long as they contain less than 0.5 grams of trans fats per serving), if the front label says “0 trans fats” but the ingredients say “hydrogenated oils” or “semi-hydrogenated” or “partly hydrogenated”, it contains trans fats, don’t buy it.

If you begin reading labels, you may be surprised at the sheer number of foods with added sugar and/or fat, and may begin to see that foods you thought were healthy are not.

Ignore the words “all-natural” on a label, as there is no standard of what that means, and there are some very artificial foods making that claim. (There are standards for the word “organic”, so that is one to look for.)

Today’s natural weight loss tip is: Read.

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Today’s simple natural weight loss tip is: Eat more meals.

That might seem confusing, but it works, as long you don’t eat more calories during the day, just space them out differently. Eating more frequent, smaller meals helps your body keep it’s metabolism working at a higher rate better than long intervals between meals. (When your body is hungry for an extended period, it goes into “starvation mode” and does what it can to conserve calories, and your metabolism slows down, so you can end up eating fewer calories but not lose any weight.)

There is a book, The Three Hour Diet by Jorge Cruise that discusses the logic behind this approach in greater detail. Jorge Cruise is a New York Times best selling author and has appeared on CNN, Dateline NBC, Good Morning America, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, The Tyra Banks Show and The View.

According to The Three Hour Diet, waiting more than three hours between meals is enough to bring on the starvation mode, and eating more frequently helps the body burn fat.

So today’s weight loss tip is: Eat more meals.

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