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If you’re someone who craves snacks
If you constantly have the need to snack on something crunchy and salty, it’s actually not the carb-loaded chips you’re craving – it’s protein. Your body works by burning protein and fats way more efficiently than carbs, which means your carbs are often stored. You might want to try something like a keto diet, where you cut out as many carbs as possible. What about the salty snacks you’re craving? Try beef jerky! Or vegan jerky if you prefer a plant-based option. The bulk of your diet should consist of dark cuts of meat, like chicken thighs, beef, dark turkey meat and fatty fish like tuna. You also want to eat a lot of fat from dairy – full-fat milk and cheese, eggs and full-fat yogurt, because the fat-free and low-fat ones are loaded with sugar, and remember – you’re trying to reduce carbs. If you want to eat plant-based products, then you’ll need to supplement with a lot of natural fats like those from avocado and nuts.
Problems with controlling weight
Some people just have more issues with controlling their weight than others. This is because, well, we’re human. If you’re someone who digests carbs, fats, and protein equally, you could consider yourself lucky – but in reality, we all have a food preference and if you eat more of one food group than another, you’ll gain weight – easy as that. Ideally, your plate would always be an equal three-part combination of everything: fats, carbs, and protein. A mixture of light and dark meat, low- and full-fat dairy and whole grains. But, since you’re probably eating more of one than the other, you can look at the offer at a NZ health store to find some supplements and digestive aids, because you’ll want to make sure you can easily digest the thing that you’re eating too much of and replenish any nutrients you might be missing.
Sugar addict
Not exactly an addict, but you find yourself craving sugar constantly. But guess what – your body is never asking you for processed sugars – it’s instead asking for healthy whole grains carbs, and you just interpret that like sugar, because there’s so much sugar in everything we eat, it’s easy to make the mistake. You probably also have quite a dependency on coffee. If you recognize yourself in this category, you want to eat quite a few carbs – but not the ones you think. Fruit contains a lot of natural sugar – which is a carb, and you should be eating plenty of it. Protein should be your number two and fats should be kept to a minimum. Remember that while you’re encouraged to eat carbs, they have to be full-grain: rice while wheat, barley, etc. The meats should be white, and you would definitely benefit from eating plant-based proteins with a lot of fiber in them, like beans and legumes.
But no matter what type you think you fit in or what people suggest, the most important thing is to listen to your body and respond to its signals. If you want to cut down on carbs because they make you feel bloated, but then you feel tired without them, you should up your fat content to bridge the calorie gap. No pre-made diet will work on everyone – actually, it shouldn’t work on anyone. But it can be a good base from which you can build up a diet that works well for you. Just keep the required macronutrients in mind, and remember that none of them are bad or evil and that they are all the building blocks of our body – we just need to get them from the right sources.
