Do you want to lose weight? Then we recommend that you stop obsessing about diets because the key is not to spend a few months restricting food, but rather the secret lies in changing habits and learning to eat healthily, managing to give our body the calories and nutrients you really need, without excesses or deficiencies. The ideal is to have a balanced diet, eat a little of everything and in its proper measure to thus nourish our body and ensure that it is in perfect condition.
In this article, we are going to propose a balanced weekly menu to lose weight with which you can be inspired to design your personalized diet with varied, delicious foods and recipes that are not boring at all. Lose weight in a healthy way and, above all, without expensive diets!
Table Of Content
1. Beneficial foods to lose weight and be healthy
2. Foods to avoid if you want to lose weight
3. Example of a balanced weekly menu to lose weight
Beneficial foods to lose weight and be healthy
If you want to lose weight effectively and, above all, in a lasting way, you don’t have to get involved in very low-calorie and restrictive diets at all. What’s more, this type of diet will make your anxiety so high when you leave it, that you will go back to your old diet with the consequent weight gain (known as “rebound effect”) and with bad eating habits that will make that you are not entirely healthy inside. According To TheSeriousfitness Top 14 Healthy Foods To Lose Weight And Recipes
Therefore, the secret to losing weight is to change habits by understanding that food is our basic source of energy and that, therefore, we must consume it, always betting on the most nutritious and healthiest for our body.
Thus, within the essential foods within a balanced weekly menu to lose weight are the following:
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- Fruits and vegetables: this group is essential to include in all diets, whether you want to lose weight or not because they are foods that provide us with a large amount of essential nutrients for the body and hardly provide us with fat or calories. Therefore, they are the perfect ingredients to start any meal or to accompany our dishes since they will give us great satiety (thanks to the fiber content) and they will provide us with very healthy vitamins and minerals.
- Proteins: within the group of proteins we will differentiate those that are of animal origin (meat, fish, dairy products and eggs) from those that are of vegetable origin (soy, tofu, seitan, etc.). Both groups are very healthy and necessary for the body because they help care for and protect muscle tissue, in addition to providing us with interesting vitamins and minerals that are ideal for the body. If you are a vegetarian, we recommend this other article on how to follow a vegetarian diet to lose weight.
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- Complex carbohydrates: carbohydrates can never be lacking in a balanced diet. This food group has been called into question in recent years by people obsessed with losing weight. The reason is that they are foods that provide us with large doses of energy (calories) and, precisely, for this reason, we must include them in our diet because they are the essential energy base of our diet. Therefore, do not give up carbohydrates, take them during breakfast or lunch and avoid them at dinner time. Here we discover what is the best time to eat carbohydrates.
- Healthy fats: fats in a diet to lose weight? Yes! Fat is basic for our body but, yes, they must be unsaturated (or healthy) fats so that they provide us with benefits such as improving our cardiovascular system, regulating cholesterol, etc. Some foods rich in these fats are nuts, olive oil, oily fish, avocado, etc.
Foods to avoid if you want to lose weight
To make your balanced weekly menu to lose weight, it is important that you know those foods that you should avoid as much as possible for several reasons: because they are high in saturated fats and, therefore, they will not help us lose weight and because they are foods that do not give us much nutrients and, however, they do provide us with large amounts of calories (which, in these cases, are known as “empty calories” since they do not provide us with almost any health benefits).
You must bear in mind that these foods should be consumed as little as possible in order to have a body in perfect condition, but this does not mean that from time to time you can give yourself a “whim”; in this way you will be able to really change your habits by not feeling that there are prohibited foods. When you are in control, anxiety decreases enormously and you will see how you start to eat well without even realizing it.
- Sweet and sugary: in this large group we include all those sweet foods such as buns, cookies, cakes, pastries, etc. They are products that are very high in saturated fats, sugars and calories and hardly provide us with nutrients, therefore, we will have to avoid them as much as possible. In this other article, we discover why it is bad to eat sugar.
- Fried and/or battered foods: basically because excess oil and, even more so, hot oil fills our body with toxins as well as calories that are totally expendable.
- Sauces: most sauces are made with products rich in fat, such as cream, oil, etc.; in addition to preservatives and elements harmful to health that can affect our well-being. Try to improve the flavor of your dishes with spices and leave aside cooking rich in fat.
- Junk food: all the fast food that we can find in a wide variety of restaurants is made with excess fats, sugars, sodium and components that are stored in our body as toxins. For example, hamburgers with fries, pizzas, etc., are foods that we should do without as much as we can.
- Salty snacks: just as there is sweet “junk” food, there is also salty food such as flavored sticks, chips and derivatives, etc. All of these packaged and processed foods are also packed with calories and fat that accumulate in the body, so avoid them!
- Soft drinks: sugary soft drinks are drinks that contain empty calories because they do not provide us with any nutrients that the body can take advantage of. So we’re just putting a lot of sugar and, in some cases, caffeine into the body. In this other article, we tell you how fattening Coca-Cola is.
- Alcohol: Although the Mediterranean diet allows the consumption of 1 glass of red wine a day, the truth is that it is recommended not to overdo it with alcohol intake. The reason is that they are drinks that are very rich in calories and that, in addition, they fill our body with toxins.
Example of a balanced weekly menu to lose weight
Having said all of the above, now we are going to discover a balanced weekly menu to lose weight that you can start doing today and lose weight without restrictions, without skipping any food and enjoying delicious and nutritious dishes.
Monday
- Breakfast: Coffee with skimmed milk + 2 toasts of wholemeal bread with oil and tomato
- Mid-morning: Infusion + 1 integral biscuit
- Lunch: Chickpea salad (tomato, onion, tuna, pepper, cucumber, etc.) + Yogurt 0%
- Snack: Infusion + Fruit of the time
- Dinner: Green beans with boiled potato
Tuesday
- Breakfast: Tea + Fresh cheese sandwich with tomato and lettuce
- Mid-morning: 1 yogurt 0% with cereals
- Lunch: Cauliflower with boiled potato + Sautéed chicken wild asparagus
- Snack: Macedonia
- Dinner: Vegetable or chicken broth (without pasta or with little) + Peppers stuffed with turkey and cheese 0%
Wednesday
- Breakfast: Coffee with milk + Whole grains
- Mid-morning: Fruit of the season
- Lunch: Green salad + Artichokes with boiled potatoes and sautéed chicken
- Snack: Infusion + Piece of fruit
- Dinner: Tomato and cheese salad 0% + Hake with fine herbs
Thursday
- Breakfast: Tea + Turkey Sandwich
- Mid-morning: Infusion + 1 integral biscuit
- Lunch: Brown rice with oil (100 grams) + Grilled egg + Yogurt 0%
- Snack: Fruit of the season
- Dinner: Vegetable broth + Homemade chicken burger with asparagus and ham
Friday
- Breakfast: Coffee with milk + Toast with oil and salt
- Mid-morning: Fruit of the season
- Lunch: Green salad + 1 chicken and vegetable wrap + 50 grams of hummus or guacamole
- Snack: 1 yogurt 0%
- Dinner: Baked sole + Baked vegetables (artichokes, tomatoes, aubergine, peppers…)
Saturday
- Breakfast: Coffee with milk + Whole grains
- Mid-morning: Nuts
- Lunch: Vegetable cream + Wholemeal pasta (50 grams) with vegetables (spinach, mushrooms, natural tomato, wild asparagus, etc.)
- Snack: Infusion + yogurt 0%
- Dinner: Vegetable broth + 2 eggs stuffed with chopped tuna, tomato and onion (without mayonnaise)
Sunday
- Breakfast: Tea + Fresh cheese sandwich with tomato and lettuce
- Mid-morning: Fruit salad
- Lunch: Baked chicken thighs + Baked potatoes with serrano ham
- Snack: Yogurt 0%
- Dinner: Boiled spinach with potato and cod
This is just an example of a menu, but in this other article, we give you more guidelines so you know how to organize a healthy weekly menu and thus enjoy a varied and healthy meal.