Weight management dietary principles include

Based on the caloric deficit, nutritional balance as the premise, and sustainability as the core. There are no other fancy shortcuts. All weight management diet plans that can be implemented in the long term are essentially a combination of these three points.

To be honest, in the five years I have been working as a weight management coach, the most controversial thing I have encountered is "whether the calorie deficit is useful or not." One group of people holds on to the law of conservation of energy and says that anyone who eats fried chicken can lose weight. The other group of people holds on to the thermic effect of food and the theory of insulin fluctuation, saying that calories are a false concept. In fact, both sides are right, but the applicable scenarios are different. If you want to lose three to five pounds in a short period of time, you can indeed lose weight by eating small portions of fried chicken as long as the total calories are lower than your consumption. However, this method of losing weight will most likely result in water and muscle loss, which will rebound within two days. If you are pursuing long-term weight stabilization, you really can’t just focus on the numbers, but you can’t drink full-sugar milk tea and eat greasy takeaways at the same time and say that you are “fat even if you drink cold water.” I once helped an office girl calculate that the cup of pearl milk tea she ordered every afternoon accounted for one-third of her basal metabolism throughout the day. Even if she eats less for dinner, it will be difficult for her to lose weight after drinking this cup of milk tea. In fact, ordinary people don't need to buy a food scale to count to one decimal place. They just remember that each meal is about one fistful of staple food, one palm of protein, and two fistfuls of green leafy vegetables. When eating, eat vegetables first, then meat, and lastly the staple food. When ordering takeout, cut off one-third of the rice in rice bowls. You will save a gap without realizing it. It is much easier than recording calories every day.

But if you just stare at the calorie numbers, you will probably not last three months. This is why many people don’t take the premise of nutritional balance seriously at first, and they only realize its importance after going through the pitfalls. There are all kinds of popular diet plans on the market now, including ketogenic, low-carb, high-carb and low-fat, Mediterranean, and intermittent fasting. Each school has a bunch of fans, and they are very noisy. To put it bluntly, it is a combination of different nutritional structures. There is no absolute good or bad, only whether it is suitable for you. I once had a client who was a marathon enthusiast. He followed the trend and tried ketosis for three months. During the half marathon, he passed out at the aid station. Later, he switched to a high-carb and low-fat structure and improved his marathon time by 20 minutes. There is also a girl with polycystic cysts. She used to eat white rice every day, and her blood sugar fluctuated greatly. She felt hungry two hours after eating. Later, she replaced half of the white rice with oats and quinoa. If you usually do little exercise and have high blood sugar, it will definitely be more comfortable to reduce the proportion of carbohydrates appropriately and eat more high-quality protein and vegetables. If you go to the gym for two hours every day, or work a lot of brains, there is nothing wrong with eating more refined carbohydrates. There is no need to chew on whole-wheat bread that you can't swallow for the sake of "health".

In fact, no matter what kind of diet structure you choose, the three words "sustainable" cannot escape the core of being able to stabilize your weight in the long term. I have seen too many people, in order to lose weight quickly, eat boiled vegetables every day without even adding more salt. After half a month, they ate three hot pot meals in revenge, and the weight immediately gained back, and their appetite was ruined. To put it bluntly, when you are looking for a partner, you will not look for someone who requires you to pretend to be perfect every day to get along with you, let alone someone who has eating habits that will accompany you for a lifetime? If you are born to drink milk tea and insist on forcing yourself not to touch it for the rest of your life, then you will feel guilty every time you take a sip, and you will easily break the bottle and eat more. For the past six years, I have managed my own weight. I have set aside two "indulgence quotas" for two meals a week. I go to barbecue with friends on Friday nights and order a cup of full-sugar milk tea on weekend afternoons. As long as I eat normally and according to the structure at other times, my weight will not fluctuate at all. On the contrary, because I don't feel deprived, I never get up in the middle of the night to sneak snacks. Of course, there are exceptions. I know an aunt who eats white porridge with pickles every day, and her weight has been stable for more than ten years. However, during the physical examination, she was found to have a serious lack of protein and osteoporosis. This kind of "stability" comes at the expense of health, and naturally does not fall into the category of healthy weight management we talk about.

After all, the weight management diet is never a rigid rule of "you can only eat what you are not allowed to eat". It is essentially a process of getting in touch with your body. There is no need to blindly follow other people's recipes, and there is no need to treat yourself harshly just to lose weight. Once you are comfortable, your body will naturally give you the feedback you want.