Altering Meal Plans to Work for Me

Torso of "The David" Statue in Rome, Italy

Being pretty health conscious and incredibly busy every day, I have been trying quite a few methods for loosing and maintaining weight. I find that with the right amount of exercise and eating right, one can loose weight a keep it off. This however as most of you know, is in the perfect low stress world where you have a residual income that allows you to spend a few hours in the gym each day or at home exercising. Overpaid actors and athletes, as well as people who inherited a lot of money that basically get paid to workout or pay themselves to workout often come to my mind. They may also have someone buy and prepare their meals for them as well. I am not saying that their jobs are not stressful just not as stressful and time consuming as the average American's job. Most of are not in that situation and so we have to find other ways to loose weight and maintain a healthy weight. Enter the multibillion dollar diet and exercise industry.
I have supported Body For Life in the past and modified it to work for me. But for the most part if I skimped on either exercise or eating perfectly healthy, I would go up and down in weight and not reach my goal of 180 pounds. The Body for Life program is great and will work if again you have the time. You have to make the time and you probably should. I am overworked and have to force time to get to the gym and spend an entire Sunday cooking meals for the week. I will probably go back to this program once again in my modified manner after I reach my 180 pound goal while closely following the Belly Fat Cure lifestyle.
The included link at the top is to the Web MD article that discredits this program but I will include a link to the website for the author of the actual Belly Fat Cure program here for your consideration as well. When a colleague mentioned this meal plan/program I was floored. "You are only allowed to eat 15 grams of sugar or fewer per day" was my response. "That is crazy" I said. Because I am a little crazy, I tried it. It really does work. I had already jump started my weight loss by 10 pounds before starting this program with one of my many but too infrequent bumps in high powered exercise and healthy eating. Since starting this program I have lost over 20 pounds. I am currently at 188 pounds. Once I make 180 pounds, I am going to return to my own meal plan program with some influences from the Belly Fat Cure program. In other words I will watch sugar more closely. The portion in the accompanying book does do a nice job talking about the science of insulin and carb swapping which is the backbone of the program. Below I have outlined what I like about the Belly Fat Cure program and what I do not like or would change.

What I liked:
• Completely cutting out processed sugar and all the products within which you fined processed sugar
• Following this plan had a great side effect of helping me control portion size
• The reinforcement that one should eat 5 or 6 small meals per day
• The science behind trying to keep insulin levels low and steady

What I did not like:
• Cutting out healthy fruits like mangoes, apples, and citrus fruits
• The amount of cheese and red meat that seemed condoned in this plan
• Having to travel further to find some of the more rare ingredients in some of the suggested meals due to the time and inconvenience

To summarize, I have used the Belly Fat Cure program or lifestyle change to get me down to an ideal weight and then from there I will design my own program. I may even consult a sports medical professional or sports nutritionist to help me design just such a program. In short, cutting out processed sugar is very good, and anything that helps me adjust my portion size and frequency of eating is also very good. Most important to busy professionals is taking time out of your weekend to plan, buy and prepare all your meals for the week will do wonders for your health and well being. I hope you have gleaned some helpful information from my ramblings. Take this advice and the advice from Web MD into consideration when analyzing both the Body For Life and Belly Fat Cure programs. Ultimately the decision is up to you and it is smart to do your research before beginning either one or any meal plan program.