Easiest Diet Ever?

Living Healthy Can Be Simple!

Easiest Diet Ever?

Moderation

Everyone and their mother are always looking for the easiest diet possible. And, with out making you wait here it is! It’s simply Moderation. 

Really That Easy?

Seriously, Moderation really can be one of the most powerful diets. If you Google Diets, you will be bombarded by thousands of diets ranging from border line starvation to complicated point counting. Here I’ll explain why moderation can be an awesome “light” version of dieting. 

Caveat 

I will admit that you do have to pay attention to what you eat but simply understanding what is in your food can surprise you. 

So What Is Moderation?

If you look up the definition for “Moderation” it basically sums it up.

“Here I’ll do it for you. This is from Dictionary.com“

    • Dictionary.com
    • noun
    • The quality of being moderate: restraint; avoidance of extremes or excesses; temperance.

The Few Steps In Understanding Moderation

You know it couldn’t be as simple as just reading a couple of words and finding one of the simplest diets right. Here we are going to go over the minimal effort that is going to be needed to understand moderation as a dieting method. 

Step One – Nearly Zero Effort (For Real)

The reason step one is considered “Nearly Zero Effort” Is you simply have to look at labels. This means that anything you eat or drink you just need to get into to the habit of knowing what is actually in it. 

Quick Example  – Just because a salad sounds healthy you should know what is actually in it. Some restaurants can serve salads with 1,500 + calories. Simply put, it doesn’t matter that it’s called a salad. A 1,500 calorie salad will not help you lose any weight. 

Step Two – Tiny Bit of Effort (I’ll help you cheat:)

Now that we got thought the entire few lines of step one, lets now cover step two. Here all we have to do is understand the label and know how to moderate it. I promise is still super simple!

To keep this simple, we are going to mainly look at two numbers that are available on just about every single edible item. These are Sugar and Calories. 

Sugar

I’m not going to sugar coat this (sorry I had too), but sugar really doesn’t belong in a human diet. Before you click away for thinking “This site must be crazy if they think I’m cutting 100% of sugar”. I am not saying you have to cut all the sugar in your life. You just have to understand the actual amounts that you are consuming. Let’s go over this a bit more. 

Is Sugar Good For Me?

Plain and simple “No”. “But, can I still enjoy sugar?”. Now this is an entirely different question. Here I am going to say that you really should make every effort you can to limit your sugar intake. Too much sugar can really have negative health effects ranging from weight gain to much higher risks of many serious diseases, but that’s more for a different post.

Sugar & Moderation

Here you may ask “How do I moderate my sugar intake?” this is where the tiny bit of effort comes into play. I know I told you I would help you cheat here, and here is the cheat: Four grams of Sugar is equal to one tea spoon. I will say that you really don’t need to know this but this can drastically help you in understanding the actual quantity of sugar in something that you are eating.

The Truth of Raw Sugar!

When I first started to learn about the whole world of eating healthier and just over all healthier living. I will admit that I thought raw sugar was massively unhealthy. Agin sugar isn’t healthy, but we are talking about moderation. I thought that something like coffee creamer had to be better than adding a teaspoon or two raw sugar to my coffee it just seemed like such a large quantity. But,  Boy was I wrong. Even though it physically looked like a lot, it was nowhere near the amount is hidden in just about anything we can sort of automatically call unhealthy. After we quickly go over Calories I will place a few examples.

Calories

This one is actually much simpler the reason that we look at calories here is to help us monitor the quantity of food we eat. I recommend reading a post that we created that talks about knowing how many calories you should be eating. (Click here for that post) I recommend that you should count artificial sweeteners similar to its real version because artificial sweeteners can still have some health effects and can effect your appetite. 

Calorie & Moderation

Simply put know the amount of calories you should be consuming and find alternative filling foods that allow you to eat much more without the calories. To learn how to do this simply look at a post we made about this exact issue (How not to be Hungry on a Diet).

Step Three – A Bit More Effort ( I promise it’s not too much)

This step is to simply look at your food with taking step two into mind (sort of a copy of step one). But the best way to explain step three is by going over a few examples.

Example 1 – My Starbucks Frappuccino

#1  Is a bit longer because we explain more here.

My favorite Starbucks Frappuccino Is the Java Chip. (I know super unhealthy)

Calories

First let’s start by looking at the calories. It has a whopping 560 calories. This a massive chunk of my daily allowed calories. So under our “Calorie Moderation” approach we should know that if we decide to consume this drink, we need to adjust our daily calorie intake. 

Quick Note – Our bodies do require calories to function. Getting a large portion of your calories from a sugar packed treat doesn’t allow your body to function optimally. This is where moderation comes into play. Every once in a while allows you to satisfy a sweet tooth and gives you an occasional treat.

Sugar 

This is where we really start to notice why so many complain about sugar. Remember from above when I thought that adding one maybe two teaspoons to my coffee was bad? Let us really look at what a lot of sugar looks like. A Java Chip Frappuccino has about 84 grams of sugar! Let’s just do a bit of math here! 4grams=1teaspoon. This means that my drink that I can finish in just a few minutes has 21 teaspoons of sugar!

Side Note – I really do find it amazing how so much sugar can be packed into such a small package. Remember the drink is mainly ice :/

Example 2 – 2 Liter of Coke

I know a lot of people that can go through an entire two liter of coke a day. (I was one of them). But you should really understand the level of sugar and calories that come in this. 

Calories

A single 2 liter of coke contains 840 calories. This is literally the majority of calories that you should be consuming in total over the entire day AND night. This is where Moderation should be really considered. You should really eliminate all soft drinks from your diet. But, for those that this isn’t an option yet you should treat these drinks as a treat. First, start by having small glasses of these drinks at a time and then try to make a deal with yourself. Try and add a few glasses of water before your soft drink. 

Side note – Super helpful hint, the longer you limit sugar the easier it gets to limit sugary drinks and foods.

Sugar

Of course we are going to cover sugar here. A single two liter of coke contains 58 and a half teaspoons of sugar! That really is a lot :/ Thats a little over a half of pound of sugar. 

Example 3 – A Whole Single Donut

We are going to use a glazed jelly donut. 

Calories

I know I’m probably making you hungry, but remember moderation 🙂 A single glazed jelly donut from Dunkin Donuts can have 490 calories. A lot, but still sort a manageable for a rare treat. 

Sugar 

Here we have about 61g of carbs and about 1 g of fiber. This leaves about 39g of sugar. With our simple math we see that this is equal to about 10 teaspoons of sugar. Again amazing how well they are packed in there. 

Let’s Do A Healthy Alternatives

Example 4 – Oat Meal (Prepared my way)

Here we are going to do Brown Sugar Apple Cinnamon Oat Meal.

Takes a whole 2 – 4 minutes to prepare

      • 1 Small chopped Apple (a lot of apple for just one serving)( 87 calories 11g of sugar)
      • 2 teaspoon of light brown sugar (30 calories 8g of sugar)
      • 1/3 cup of 1 minute oats (100 calories 1g of sugar)
Calories

This is where we have to understand that all calories are not the same. In this meal that can serve as a good filling breakfast or a large snack (big enough to ruin and skip dinner). Healthy foods like fruits and oat meal can actually help you in more than one way. They can be very filling. This meal is great as a breakfast because oats and fruits keep you feeling full longer and helps curb your appetite. 

Total calories here are 217, not bad for the amount you eat and how full you feel afterwords. Also, you can stretch the apple for more than one serving (its a bit too much).

Sugar

Here is another area that can be considered a bit gray. Some fruits contain a lot of sugar. but these sugars are much healthier than the refined and artificial ones. Here is a place we want to focus more on calories. We only have 2 teaspoons of sugar that are not from the apple in this entire  snack/meal. 

Conclusion

There’re a few reasons why moderation can be considered a great and possibly easiest dieting method. First, it allows you to eat just about anything you want in moderation. Second, you can easily adjust your meals to fit your goals. 

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