Don’t spend hundreds of dollars on a low calorie junk food program. Choose a show that teaches you how to make good lifestyle choices while eating real food. The only way to make your weight loss permanent is to treat it like a healthy lifestyle, not a diet. Make losing weight less important than feeling healthier.
Whole30 is a great program. You can buy the book or just read the rules here:
http://whole9life.com/2012/08/the-whole30-program/
Here’s what you do: Spend 30 days eating lots of vegetables, some fruit and good quality protein and fat. You don’t need to buy any weird special powders or foods or anything. Just eat good food.
Here’s what you can’t do: no added sugar, no fake sugar, no alcohol, no white potatoes, no grains, no dairy, and no legumes (including beans, peanuts, and all soy ingredients). No MSG, no carrageenan and no added sulphites. Corn is a grain – not corn.
Maybe that sounds like giving up too much, but basically you’re just choosing real nutritious foods over less nutritious foods. However, you have to have access to vegetables. It is very important that you eat vegetables with every meal, as well as your healthy source of protein. And remember, your protein should come from food, not expensive synthesized powders and weird food substitutes. Eat real food!
It’s hard in a dining room where someone else prepares all the food and your options are limited. Typically, cafeteria food is full of soy, grains, dairy, and sugar. These foods are all inflammatory for many people. They are also not very nutritionally dense. Too many calories, too few vitamins per calorie, so not satisfying. Foods that are high in calories but not filling make you eat more and also wreck your metabolism. No wonder most people gain weight in college!
But it is possible to make the best possible choices at university. Always choose as many vegetables as possible. Is there a salad bar? Make your own salad dressings and have a salad with every meal. Go for the high-protein option from the hotline, skip the grains, and load up on the veggie sides. Find out how the dining room prepares the food. Ask about the oils, broths and sauces they use. If you have access to a real kitchen, prepare your food from scratch as much as possible.
If you order the book that comes with Whole30 (It Starts With Food), you’ll find not only the science and other reasons to follow this plan for 30 days, but also a transition plan.
One by one, you test how you react to individual unplanned foods and determine if and how often you want to eat them. For example, after completing thirty days without dairy, grains, sugar, legumes, alcohol or additives, you can test your reaction to dairy. You add dairy, but at first none of the other unplanned foods. See how you feel over the course of a few days. So stop eating dairy and try another food. Test the rice and see how you feel. Stop eating rice and try another food. You might find that you feel phlegmatic eating dairy, depressed eating wheat, bloated eating soy, but fine eating a bowl of rice. You may find that none of the unplanned foods make you feel bad, exactly… just that you feel better without them. Or you might not feel any different with or without specific foods as long as you eat clean most of the time, most of the time.
This is just one example of a good plan – choose what’s right for you. More importantly, it’s something you can do with the resources you have. Make sure it’s a real food plan, not fake food. And make sure he teaches you how to transition. And don’t forget to take care of yourself in other ways: get plenty of rest, drink lots of water and move your body.
Good luck!