Your Healthy Weight Goal

Your Healthy Weight Goal

Setting targets, and especially short-term targets

, can be very motivating and

help keep you on track. Your weight target should fall somewhere in the healthy

to overweight

categories. If you have a lot to lose, setting a more modest goal, say, 5% to 10%

of your current weight, would help you feel successful as you meet and exceed

your targets, and make you healthier. In the Diabetes Prevention Study, losing as

little as 7% of body

weight significantly lowered the risk of diabetes.

BMI (Body Mass Index)

What are your personal health risks?

• Waist size too large?

• Blood pressure too high?

• Cholesterol or triglycerides too high?

• High-salt diet?

• Eating too many sugary or starchy foods?

• Eating too many fried foods?

• Not eating enough vegetables? fruit?

dairy?

We are not going to calculate your target calories. That’s right, you will not need

to count calories. Instead you will focus on including food groups, and learn to

watch

portion sizes, especially for the high-calorie foods. This is so much simpler.

After all, we eat food, not calories. Focusing on how to include a variety of food

groups will teach you habits that you will use for a lifetime.

Further, you want to be sure that you are losing fat, not muscle. A balanced plan

with plenty of protein, calcium, and magnesium will help preserve muscle.

Adding exercise, especially strength training, will also help with maintaining

lean body mass and help keep metabolism as high as possible.

The DASH Diet Weight Loss Solution

With this plan, you will stay full, crave less junk food, and feel like you are

eating in a way that is cleaner and lighter. You will want to continue to have this

feeling. This makes it much easier to stay on track with your plan.

During the first phase, you will relearn how to make meals. Your focus will be

on

choosing protein-rich foods that add satiety. You will learn to pair the protein

foods with vegetables that provide bulk and happen to be very healthy and very

low-calorie. This phase will reset your taste preferences, and turn you on to

lighter, healthier eating. It is a two-week transition to reset your entire approach

to eating. And it will boost weight loss.

The faster, initial weight loss is very motivating, because of the visible changes.

You will shortly be aware that your clothes match looser, in particular round the waist.

The only key DASH diet component that is missing during phase one is fruit.

The

good news is that it is missing only during the first phase. We are giving your

digestive hormones, liver, and pancreas a break from your typical diet. It is

especially important to allow your blood sugar to be calm and stable. By not

including starchy and sugary foods, you will ensure that you won’t have blood

sugar spikes. You will avoid the highs and

lows that are typical of most eating patterns. This immediately calms your

hunger.

Other side benefits that have been reported during the initial phase include

reduction or elimination of gastric reflux, reduced “brain fog,” and reduced

symptoms of allergies.

Because there are no grains, of course, this part of the plan is gluten-free. It does

contain dairy since that is a key part of the DASH diet, but you can also choose

dairy substitutes if that is a problem for you.

After this initial reset phase, you are ready for Phase Two, which is a lower-carb

plan.

You will have already learned to make your meals more satisfying with proteins,