Live a Low Carb Life with heather dibiasi
Three Simple Tips to Start Transitioning Into a Low Carb Lifestyle to Lose Weight
If you’re struggling on your weight loss journey, and you feel like a low carb plan would probably be great for you, you’ve heard of other people having success and you want to start implementing it yourself, but you’re having a hard time transitioning into the low carb lifestyle, then this is for you.
I’m going to be going over three of my top tips to help you transition to living a low carb lifestyle so you can lose weight, feel amazing in your body, decrease food cravings, decrease hanger, and being hangry all the time, increase energy, and start living a life that you love. If you’re new around here – Hi, welcome. My name is Heather DiBiasi. I’m a registered dietician and weight loss expert, and I specialize in helping women lose weight with a low carb lifestyle.
What is a carbohydrate?
Before we get started, I just want to explain what a carbohydrate even is, just in case anyone is a little confused on that. Basically, it’s going to be anything that is a starch or a fruit. You probably know your starches, things like pastas, rice, potatoes, beans, crackers, chips, all that good stuff. Then your fruits are going to be things like your banana, apple, pear, peach, etc.
Tip 1: Quality of Carbohydrates
Tip number one is to be focusing on the quality of your carbohydrates. So 80, 90% of the time, we want to have whole food sources of carbs as opposed to process sources. So if you don’t really know what a whole food source is, it’s basically a food with one ingredient. There’s no ingredient list, right? When you go to the store and buy an apple, there’s no ingredient list. It’s just one apple, as opposed to when you buy a box of crackers, multiple ingredients, it’s more of a processed food. It’s in a package, it’s in a bag, and that’s really going to be the main difference.
The whole food source is something that you could find in nature and that’s how it’s really intended to be eaten. So for example, we have pear versus some chips. The pear would be a whole food carbohydrate. The chips would be a more-processed carbohydrate.
Now, the reason we want to choose the whole food more than the process carbs, is because this is the natural state that the food is in. And typically it’s also wrapped in more fiber when it comes to weight loss, fiber is so important. There’s so much research that leans toward the fact that the more fiber someone eats, the better it is for their weight loss. The fuller you’re going to be, not to mention the other benefits fiber has when it comes to regulating your blood sugar, your cholesterol, and improving your digestion. In addition, a lot of processed foods have also added salt, sugars, and fats that make them more likely to overeat. And that’s not necessarily what we want for weight loss.
Tip 2: Quantity of Carbohydrates
Tip number two is going to be quantity. Portion size is so important when it comes to carbs. Because at the end of the day, whether it’s that whole food source or not whole food source, 15 grams of carbs is 15 grams of carbs, so we need to portion our carbohydrates. If you don’t really know where to start with this, I recommend starting with half a cup for a measuring cup and use that to portion out a lot of your carbs. That is a portion for a majority of them, or you can always read the serving size on a label. That’s a great way to go about it too.
A tip if you’re out to eat, if you’re at a friend’s house, something like that, or this is just easier for you, you can just use the plate method. So just keep the carbohydrates at a quarter of your plate. That’s going to be a great way to make sure that you’re portioning them out and you’re making carbs more of a side dish instead of a main dish. That’s what I recommend to my clients.
Tip 3: Balancing Carbohydrates with Protein and Fat
Tip number three would be to balance your carbohydrates with protein and fat. What protein and fat do, is they stop that spike in blood sugar that carbohydrates give us and then keep our blood sugar nice and steady throughout the day. That’s so important when it comes to weight loss, because when your blood sugar is in control, you feel in control of your food choices. It really helps to decrease your being hangry, decrease cravings, increased energy levels. And that’s really what we want while you’re on your weight loss journey, so you’re feeling amazing along the process.
Make sure to add a good quality protein source, such as eggs, chicken, fish, turkey, steak, a good quality protein powder as well as a fat source. That could be nuts, seeds, avocado, coconut, oils, pesto, dressing, etc. to your meal, especially when you have carbohydrates so you can keep your blood sugar stable and you can decrease hunger hormones. Protein and fat also do a really good job at shutting down those hunger hormones in different ways. And they’re going to keep you fuller and more satisfied on your weight loss journey.
I hope this was helpful for you. And if you’re interested in learning more about how to live a low carb lifestyle and lose weight, I have a free workshop on exactly that. This workshop walks you through the exact process I walk my clients through, so absolutely check it out if that’s something that you’re interested in!
Learn how to live a low carb lifestyle today by checking out my video! https://youtu.be/vqjJM7xqkb4
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