.png){kind=small}
While you can probably lose weight eating any type of food as long as you are in a caloric deficit, it's generally preferred to eat healthier and lower calorie foods 80-90% of the time. Lower calorie foods that have higher volume take up more space in your stomach and help you feel full on fewer calories at each meal. Ensuring that we get enough protein and fat will help us feel satiated longer, as well. When I rely too much on prepackaged carb heavy foods, I tend to overeat because those foods don't stick with me long, whereas protein and fat will keep me from getting hungry longer. Eating some carbohydrates is fine, but if we add a little fat and protein to those carbohydrates they stick with us a little longer.
It's normal (especially when first starting to eat in a caloric deficit) to feel a bit hungry at times, but we shouldn't be ravenous all the time. We can usually only maintain that ravenous hunger for so long before we end up bingeing and overeating. We want to be in a slight caloric deficit, a few hundred calories or so per day from maintenance, and eating food that will help us stay satisfied for as long as possible.
This is an area where intermittent fasting can help us out. I have sometimes a terrible habit of the eating too much of my food early in the day and not saving anything for the evening. 😂 If I can hold myself off from eating for just a couple hours in the morning, instead of eating as soon as I wake up, that allows me to get busy and get some other things done before I really start thinking about food. That also allows me to have slightly larger, more satisfying meals later in the day, and leaves me more of my calories to put in my evening meal where we sit down as a family to eat together. My husband, Bobby is doing the cut with me so we're pretty much on the same plan as far as food goes, his amounts are just larger than mine. If he weren't doing this with me, choosing to intermittent fast could be really helpful if I needed to save more calories for my evening meal and spend few of my calories earlier in the day.
One caution I would give though, is to watch out for accidental overeating later in the day because you feel like you can eat whatever you want having not eaten for several hours in the morning. The other side of the coin is that there's nothing magical about intermittent fasting, or that you need to do it if it doesn't fit your lifestyle very well. It also doesn't have to fit anyone else's regimented, strict 6 or 8 hour eating window if it doesn't fit you well.
A lot of you have worked with me before, and know that I'm not about quick fixes and unsustainable, drastic measures. The true key to changing our bodies is long-term consistency with a sensible plan, but 12 weeks is long enough to see and feel a change, and make new habits to support our long term goals. 💗
