• Snack diet, so helps a sandwich to lose weight and stay in shape
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Summer arrives and the goal of maintaining a healthy weight becomes more present than ever. The key to achieving this is an open secret: some exercise – not just cardio, to burn calories quickly; Also strength, to define the muscles and continue to produce caloric expenditure once the exercise is finished- and healthy diet, with the right and balanced proportion of carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins and healthy fats. "There are diets that have been sold for their 'miracle effects,' and they can indeed achieve rapid weight loss, but they are torture. The consequence is that they are abandoned and after six or twelve months there is a rebound effect and all the weight that had been lost is recovered, "explains Dr. Miguel Ángel Martínez-González, specialist in Preventive Medicine and Public Health, author of the book 'What do you eat?' and the great expert in the Mediterranean diet, recognized as the healthiest in the world.

The expert focuses the key aspects when it comes to eating well and not getting fat on the benefits of the Mediterranean diet and avoiding "low-quality carbohydrates, that is, foods rich in starches and with many starches (white bread, potatoes, pizza, rice) or added sugars (sugary drinks, including juices, industrial pastries, cookies and cakes)".

Is it enough to follow these tips? Sometimes not, because no matter how much good diet and exercise we include in our day to day, sometimes the scale does not accompany and the task of controlling the extra kilos becomes titanic. At this point, to the long list of mistakes we make and that prevent us from losing weight even by dieting, experts at Harvard University have just added one more.

According to one of his recent studies, to maintain a healthy weight it is not enough to think about what you eat, it is also important to control when you do it. Because yes, the time does matter and the moment of the day when we sit at the table is decisive.

This is stated in his essay, published by the scientific and academic journal 'Cell Metabolism'. The Harvard researchers who conducted the study subjected 16 obese or overweight people to an identical diet for six days in a row, in which they only introduced changes in meal times, establishing two different ones.

In the first, participants ate breakfast, lunch and dinner, but finished their last meal six and a half hours before bedtime. In the second, with the same meals the participants sat at the table four hours later and finished their meals two and a half hours before going to sleep.

And the results have left no room for doubt. During the research, the scientists measured the hormones that regulate the participants' appetite, body temperature, calorie expenditure, and fat cells. All these data, ordered and analyzed, yielded a conclusion: starting to eat later increases hunger, decreases the amount of calories burned and favors the accumulation of fat.

As can be seen from the report, dinner can cause weight gain and, on the other hand, when the goal is to lose weight we have to adjust our meal schedules to the clock, advance dinners and not try a bite during the six and a half hours before going to sleep.

What time to have dinner

In any case and although the goal is not to lose weight, to maintain a healthy weight in addition to a good diet it is essential that "dinners are light", says Dr. Alfonso Pérez, doctor and team director of EAP Roselló (CAPSE - Hospital Clínic de Barcelona). In this way, in addition, "our digestion will improve and sleep will be more restorative". According to the expert from the Department of Health and Wellness of the Mapfre Foundation, "the energy amount of dinner should not constitute more than 20% of the amount of daily calories ingested". Most of them should be consumed during breakfast and lunch, and it is "preferable to make dinner at least two hours before bedtime, thus leaving enough time for digestion and that it does not interfere with sleep." As a last tip, the doctor recommends taking a relaxing infusion without theine before going to sleep, which will help both digest dinner and sleep restorily.

Slimming with the Harvard plate

The Harvard Plate is a guide to healthy and balanced eating created by nutrition experts at the Harvard School of Public Health. An alternative to the famous nutritional pyramid, the Harvard dish focuses especially on the quality of the diet. That is, the type of carbohydrates we take will be more important than the amount, because some – such as those that come from vegetables, fruits, whole grains and legumes – are healthier than others.

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In this sense, the Harvard plate encourages taking "healthy calories", for example those that come from oils and good fats, and avoiding those of little nutritional value, such as those that include sugary drinks and soft drinks. And he organizes the meal using a single dish, which he divides into three parts, each intended for a food group.

The most important would be for vegetables (50%), and the other half of the plate would be distributed equally, 25% whole grains and the other 25% for proteins.

In addition, in that dish we do not include any food. These are the main keys to the Harvard dish:

  • Bet on vegetables, both fresh and cooked, as the base of your plate – as we said, they should be half – and for dessert take fresh fruit. This ensures a diet rich in vitamins, minerals, fiber and flavors. Incorporate color and variety and remember: the Harvard plate does not include potatoes as vegetables.
  • Fish, white meat, legumes and eggs are proteins of high biological value, so they should be a quarter of the dish. Dairy and nuts are considered secondary sources, except for nuts, which appear as very healthy proteins. Restrict the consumption of red meat and avoid processed meat foods or sausages.
  • Always eat whole grains and whole grains – whole wheat, barley, quinoa, oats, tubers, brown rice – because they have a more moderate effect on blood sugar intake than white bread, white rice, and other refined grains. They must be the fourth part of the plate that we were missing. Also choose meals prepared with these ingredients, such as whole wheat pasta.
  • Choose extra virgin olive oil, both for cooking and for taking raw, and avoid any other: corn, sunflower... since they are refined oils that contain low quality fats.
  • Water is the main drink. Other options are coffee and tea, always without sugar. Avoid industrial juices, soft drinks and sugary drinks. Milk and dairy products should be limited to one or two servings a day, and natural juices to a small glass a day.
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