How to Buy Diet Food

Fad diets and diet foods that promise instant weight loss are useless, yet we continue to buy and consume them by the bushel. While some decent diet foods are available today, they should be coupled with a healthy lifestyle. Learn the best ways to integrate special diet foods in your menus to get the most out of them with a few of these tips.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Read labels. Many products promoted as diet foods are traps for people trying to lose weight. They may be loaded with sugar to make up for the lack of taste. Take the time to honestly examine that little food guide on every packaged food label today.
2. Limit your reliance on health food and energy bars that tout themselves to be diet food. The calories in them are often equal to a bowl of soup or a decent meal of salad and chicken. You may ultimately sabotage your efforts by relying on diet bars because they will not fill you and could lull you into believing you're dieting well.
3. Change your thinking. While lettuce and carrots are good diet foods, consider these veggies to be an essential part of a lifelong healthy eating plan. If you think of certain fruits and veggies only as diet food, then you may not eat these foods when you reach your weight goal. You will then find the weight returning with a vengeance.
4. Look at portion size. Many people think the portion size refers to entire can or package, when in fact the "serving size' may refer to only half or a quarter of the item. Paying attention so you do not mistakenly eat more calories than you should.
5. Buy in bulk. When you are loading up on diet bars, diet shake mixes and diet frozen meals, you will always get better deals when you buy in bulk. The price of individual diet foods can end up being another harbinger in your quest to lose weight. Saying it's too expensive is another great excuse to add to your list.
6. Evaluate the fat content in diet foods realistically. Even foods labeled as "diet" can contain high levels of fat. Daily intake of fat should not exceed 30 percent of the calories coming from fat, with only 10 percent of those calories from saturated fat.

Tips & Warnings

• Ideally, you should take in less than 2,300 mg, or 1 tsp of salt, per day. So watch the sodium levels on any processed foods.