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Fruits and vegetables are full of nutrients and the vitamins and minerals we need to function healthily. They are also relatively low calorie so you get to eat more of them, for example a cup of green beans has only 60 calories. Fruits and vegetables are also rich in fibre, so you feel fuller after a meal.

If you get a calorie counter book or visit a website you will see that all fatty and sugary foods are high in calories, so you should limit them if you want to lose weight. This will also help your general health, diets high in fat and sugar lead to heart disease and diabetes as well as being linked to various cancers, whether you are overweight or not. The calories in pre-packaged foods are listed on the labels, but check out the portion size.

So how do I follow a 1000-calorie diet?

To begin a 1000-calorie diet get a calorie counter book (this lists the calorie counts as well as the fat content of just about any food you can think of) and a notebook. With the calorie counter book in hand, work out what you will eat the next day. The next day write down everything you actually eat or drink and at the end of the day add up how many calories you have eaten. Be honest, you will only be cheating yourself if you "forget" the chocolate biscuit at break time, or eat double the size of serving in the book. This gets much easier over time, you no longer have to plan meals ahead as you get to know roughly what you will be able to eat and stay inside your limit. If all this seems hard there are plenty of menu plans out there in books and on the Internet.

What else can you do?

All weight loss involves eating fewer calories than you use. We have talked about eating less, but just as important is exercising more. By increasing your exercise you increase your calorie requirements for the day and so lose more weight. The added benefit of this is that by losing fat and increasing muscle through exercise you get to increase your basal metabolic rate, and so increase your rate of weight loss.

Learn more about this author, Eve Redstone.
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