How to Plan a Low Calorie Diet

Video Transcript

"My name is Christine Marquette and I'm a Registered Dietitian with the Austin Regional Clinic and I'm going to talk to you about how to plan Low Calorie Diet. The first thing that you're going to do is look at how you normally eat, try to identify some foods that are high calorie. High calorie foods tend to be those foods that either have a lot of sugar or they have a lot of fat. High sugar foods for most people will often come from beverages, soft drinks, fruit juices, smoothies, sports drinks. All of those types of beverages tend to have a lot of calories. So, when you're actually, say for example you pick up a sports drink, you flip it over, you look at the label. The first thing you want to make sure and look at is the serving size, because very frequently that entire bottle is not the serving size. A lot of times it will only be half of the bottle. So if you just look at the calorie content, that might not be telling you the true picture. You may pick it up and think, oh, I'm only getting fifty calories, when if you actually drink the whole bottle you might actually be getting one hundred and fifty calories. So you need to look at the serving size. If that's a really large source of calories for you, you'd want to angle for a beverage that doesn't have added sugar, so a sugar free soft drink, a sugar free sports drink, plain old water, unsweetened tea or tea sweetened with a sugar substitute. That will eliminate a lot of calories for you. The next step, you're actual meals, you want to look at how they're prepared. If they're deep fried, that's going to be a lot of calories, because of all of the additional fat. If you are eating very fatty meats, things like bacon or sausage, that's going to have a lot of calories. So you want to choose foods that tend to be very lean, if it's going to be meat. If you're looking at plant sources of fat, those are going to be healthy fats, but they do still have a lot of calories, so you do want to practice portion control. So for example, if you are eating nuts you want to limit your serving size to no more than a quarter cup at a time. If you're eating avocados you want to split that avocado with somebody, don't eat the whole thing. Try to limit your portion to only about a quarter of a small avocado. If you're having olives, have no more than three large olives, if you're cooking with oil, just just enough oil to actually prevent sticking with whatever item you're cooking, whether you're stir frying vegetables, or stir frying some other item. The other thing to keep in mind, is throughout your whole day, how often that you're eating, it is a good idea to eat small, frequent meals, but again you're really going to have to practice portion control. Make sure that you eat small amounts if it's a fatty item even if it's a healthy fat, like nuts or seeds. So those are just a few things to keep in mind when planning a low calorie diet."