Whether you’re 20 or 50 years old, eating a nutrient-filled diet is essential to staying healthy, lean, and strong. For men, this means ensuring you eat a balanced meal every time, including breakfast.
If you’re trying to lose weight, diet is an essential part of your weight loss journey. Even if you hit the gym for more than an hour a day and you’re still eating the wrong foods, you’ll find it very hard to lose the extra pounds.
The best foods to help you lose weight are selections that fill your plate, keep your body lean and muscular, and make you full and satisfied. Here’s a detailed guide of the foods you should include in your meal plan.
The importance of including proteins in your meals
Men tend to have more lean muscle tissues, so it’s important to ensure adequate intake of amino acids that preserve your lean tissue while filling you up. Amino acids are the building blocks found in protein. Essential amino acids aren’t produced in the body, but found in the food you eat like eggs, meat, fish, milk, and yogurt, and if you’re a vegetarian, you can eat soy, chia seeds, buckwheat, flax seeds, and quinoa. Your body makes non-essential amino acids like alanine and glycine, so you don’t need to get them from food. It will help if you eat lean proteins that are good for general health and the production and maintenance of lean muscle mass in your body.
Protein quality is determined by protein digestibility corrected amino acid score (PCDAAS). These consider amino acid content, balancing it with other factors that relate to digestibility. Milk, meat eggs, casein, whey, peanuts, black beans, and soy proteins have a higher digestibility score. But then, if you’re a man who needs to lose some extra pounds, you may lack time to research all the PCDAAS scores of every food you eat. When making your shopping list, scan the list and ensure you’re buying lean protein foods.
Choosing healthier meals
The first step to choosing healthier meals to eat is starting with learning how to cook for yourself. This ensures you’re aware of all the ingredients used to prepare the meal and if they are healthy or not. It gives you the power to choose more nutritious foods to eat, giving your body the fuel it needs to get lean and stronger.
The kind of foods recommended when on a weight loss journey are whole foods like fruits and vegetables. It would help if you also focused on healthy fats and lean proteins rather than fat proteins. Here are examples of foods you should have in your next grocery-shopping list.
- Cottage cheese: Ensure you check the sodium content on the nutrition facts on the cheese label. It will help keep your salt intake to a minimum.
- Beans like chickpeas, black beans, green peas, and black-eyed peas are great examples of healthy legumes that help you build muscle.
- Bison and other game meats. These are lean meats, but still full of flavor.
- Dark green leafy vegetables like broccoli, kales, and spinach: You can eat as much as you want and still keep healthy.
- Fresh fruits for smoothies, fresh juice, or eating them whole: They are rich in antioxidants that will speed up your metabolism, flush out nasty toxins, and even improve your skin.
- Fish like salmon and tuna are good for your heart because they provide omega-3 fatty acids, known as good fats.
- Lean cuts of mutton and beef, like flank steak and fillet mignon, are great additions to your diet.
- Poultry like turkey or chicken is an excellent choice. Buy the skinless varieties to get out the fat.
- Whole grains like quinoa, buckwheat, barley, and brown rice are also good.
- Low-fat Greek yogurt: Ensure that you buy brands that are low in sugar content.
Choosing nutritious snacks
When you’re on a diet and avoiding certain fruits you used to overindulge in, you’re likely to get hungry in between meals. But then, eating snacks can undo the effort you put into making a healthy balanced meal. It’s essential to know when you snack and what you snack on to balance and keep your nutrition meal plan in check.
The snack shelf at your local grocery store is one place to avoid because they are foods you’re likely to overeat. Men usually crave salty and fried foods like burgers, French fries, chips, or sweeter foods like cakes and cookies when actively trying to lose weight. Here’s a list of snacks you can stock up on that are healthy.
- Hard-boiled eggs: Also a great source of high-quality protein and can be eaten with lots of vegetables, too.
- Chopped veggie sticks: These can be served with bean dips or hummus.
- Low-calorie protein snack bars: These are great when you don’t have time to prepare something, and you’re on the go.
- Low-fat dairy products: Go with chocolate milk or skim milk, which is perfect for a post-workout boost, instead of the high-calorie and artificially-sweetened energy drinks used for sports.
- Nuts: Brazil nuts, peanuts, and almond nuts provide your body with good fats and are filling, too.
- Peanut butter on whole-grain crackers: Savory and will satisfy your cravings.
- Plain low-fat Greek yogurt: You can add some zing to it and top it up with berries (raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, etc.) or chia seeds for extra nutrition and satiety.
Don’t forget your two liters of water intake per day. Sometimes, you may be thirsty and mistake it for hunger cravings. Skip the over-sweetened sodas that are full of unhealthy calories. Skip the bakery section, too, unless you’re going for whole-grain baked bread. It’s healthier and won’t derail your weight loss journey.
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