What to Eat If You're Obese | Obesity

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Let's talk a little bit about nutrition, and how we can help change your lifestyle to help you lose weight. First thing is, examine your diet and see if you drink liquid calories. What are liquid calories? Well, things like soda, juice, and alcohol. There's no reason why you should be drinking many calories, so stick to water. Things like Crystal Light, or even diet Snapple.

The next thing is, you want to take your time when you eat. Your brain needs time to catch up with your stomach to know that you're full. If you sit down and you eat a meal in five minutes, undoubtedly you're going to eat more than if you took 30 minutes to eat your meal, because with time you'll realize that you're full and most likely you won't finish that whole sandwich.

The next thing is, try to stick to foods that are high in protein and low in carbs. Lean meats, cheeses, eggs are all high in protein and are very good at keeping your blood sugar pretty equal throughout the day so that there's not high fluctuations. When you eat foods that are high in carbohydrates, that leads to insulin release in your body, and fluctuations in your sugar throughout the day. This actually makes you hungrier, and it leads to eating more throughout the day.

Another piece of nutrition advice is to make sure that you eat enough vegetables. Fruits are also important. However, what a lot of people don't realize is that fruits are high in sugar, so while eating one piece of fruit a day is great, eating three pieces of fruit three times a day will lead to weight gain, because sugar is calories and you will end up gaining weight if you eat fruit throughout the day.

Portion control is also very important when you're trying to either lose weight or watch your weight. Today's society, when we go out to eat, portions are usually three to four times the size of what we actually need, so one tip might be if you go with a friend, order one meal and split it. Or, order a meal and eat half and bring the rest home to eat later.

Another thing is, when you do go shopping, look at the labels. Look at the nutrition labels. And things you want to look for are, obviously, how many calories, but also you want to look at the fat content, and also the carbohydrate and sugar content. Generally speaking, if you're trying to watch your weight, you don't want to eat a snack that is very high in carbohydrates, say, greater than 30 grams. Also, you want to make sure that you try to eat foods that are low in sugar, maybe less than 15 grams or so. And the higher the protein is, usually the better. If you're going to pick a snack, a healthy snack usually should have at least five to six grams of protein in it.

Here's some nutritional advice for those of you who are trying to combat obesity, or trying to lose weight.