Breakfast

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Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  Never skip this meal.  So many people lead lifestyles without breakfast.  This is the first meal of the day and provides energy for a better workout and a fuller stomach.  You should always try to eat at least 300 calories for breakfast each morning.
If you eat a 300-500 calorie meal every morning this will do wonders to your weight loss.  People think that if they start the day off right with just eating a little granola bar, small bowl of cereal, or skipping the meal altogether that they will lose weight faster.  What most dieters dont realize is that having a healthy size breakfast will help you to chose better foods for lunch and dinner.  What i mean by this is that your cravings for that double cheeseburger and large fry will subside.
Try doing this for breakfast from now on and you will notice a huge change in your appetite.  Observe what happens to day's food intake when you eat at least 300 calories for breakfast.  The idea behind this is that you give your body the fuel it needs in the morning so you have all day to burn it off.  You will also notice that you are not eating as much for dinner.  I know that in America dinner is the biggest meal of the day but you need to get away from this concept.  If you follow this advice for breakfast it will not be as difficult.

Now that you know the amount of food you should be eating for breakfast, the next step is picking the healthy foods.  Egg whites are always a great start to a hearty meal.  They are low in calories and high in protein.  If you are one of those people who cant stand the taste of egg whites then add a real egg and it will blend the flavor.  In my opinion i would always put an egg in there because if you just eat egg whites you are missing out on a lot of nutrients.  I usually will eat an english muffin with a little bit of peanut butter on it (you could just have a piece of toast also).  The english muffin gives me a good source of carbs for energy and the peanut butter has a very filling effect to it.  If you wash this down with a glass of skin milk or 1% milk you will have just had about a 400 calorie breakfast.  You could substitute the milk with orange juice if you would like.  I get up around 7 every morning and pretty much have a breakfast just like this with some alterations and i do not tend to get hungry until noon.  I know this is how it should be but if you try eating a 50 calorie breakfast you would have a hard time making it 5 hours without eating again.  Other suggestions for a hearty breakfast would be:
  • Egg whites with one egg (100 calories), 1 cup of fruit (75 calories), glass of skin milk or orange juice (100 calories) Total: 275 calories
  • Egg whites with one egg (100 calories), half a grapefruit (50 calories), piece of toast with peanut butter (75 calories), glass of orange juice (100 calories) Total: 325 calories

Lunch

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Now noon is creeping up on you and you can start to feel some rumbles in your stomach.  When you have a 9 to 5 job it can be very difficult to stay away from fast food or eating out with some co-workers.  Eating out is not always bad but when you first start out dieting you should make an effort to stay away from restaurants.  The reason for this being that there are many temptations that restaurants offer that you need to avoid.  The 20 oz. porterhouse and the hot fudge brownie with vanilla ice cream can really ruin your day.  Now if you do have the discipline to order a salad then go for it.  Another reason i suggest you to not go to restaurants is that many times even a healthier selection of food can come in a portion too big.  What you should try to do is pack a lunch at home before you head off to work.  
This can be a little more difficult.  There are several things you can eat for lunch.  Since this is the case I am not going to tell you what you should be eating for lunch.  Instead, I will give you guide lines for what it should consist of.  
Protein- This is very important for all meals of the day.  Protein does a few things that will help you lose weight.  It fill you up for starters.  Thats a plus!  It also will help you build lean muscle if you decide to lift weights while dieting.
Vegetable- Try to get a pretty good size portion of vegetable.  Asparagus is a very good vegetable to eat.  It is high in fiber.  That is the goal of eating vegetables for lunch.
Not to high in calorie- Keep this meal between 350-500 calories.

Dinner

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Breakfast is the most important meal of the day but dinner is the most important meal to lose weight.  You need to be really careful in what you eat around dinner because you will be going to sleep soon and don't want the food to be sitting in your stomach.  You also don't want it to be fatty and high in calories.  The plus side to all this is that as long as you followed my advice about breakfast and lunch then you should not want a huge meal around this time.  Also i should mention that you can have a snack between lunch and dinner. Just make it small.  100 to 150 calories tops.
Again since their are so many options you could eat for dinner I cannot tell you exactly what to eat but I am going to give you some guide lines as i did for lunch.
Chicken- you can never go wrong with chicken.  Chicken is high in protein and low in calorie for the most part.  I strongly suggest to stack up on chicken.
Vegetables- yes vegetables! I know that I put this for lunch too but you can make these a delicious treat.  Cooking some italian cut green beans in a pan with a little vegetable oil and garlic salt is very good.
Small Protein Shake- I say small because you a protein shake can be a little high in calorie but it is very high in protein which will help you to skip those tempting snacks later on.