Meal Plan for Weight Loss
Are you familiar with the moment when you’re grocery shopping and forget whether saturated or unsaturated fats are better? Tired of trying out diet recipes and discovering they usually contain something you don’t like? Sick of starting the diet game from scratch every few months, or starving yourself to try and lose weight?
What’s the solution? Achieve success with the Cerascreen - Upfit meal plan for weight loss (perfect for women & men).
Do you have any questions about the Cerascreen - Upfit meal plan? Ask them in the live chat or at cerascreen@upfit.io and we will answer your questions!
1. "This diet works - I've done it 10 times ..."
If life were a video game, the scale would be the final big boss. You’re not alone: More than half of Britons struggle with their weight and are looking for ways to finally achieve and maintain their target weight long-term.
Each of us knows about countless diets and diet products – from friends, from advertising, and from the internet. Unfortunately, many of these diets are unscientific, ineffective, and unhealthy. What you will not find is a diet or diet plan for weight loss that works without a calorie deficit.
Your body is like a machine that consumes and processes energy, aka calories. When you give your body more calories than it needs, you gain weight. A calorie deficit means less calories – energy – than your body needs to maintain your weight. Does that mean you should starve yourself skinny? No. You can lose weight without starving yourself. And even though exercise is a sensible method for weight loss(more on that later), you can lose weight without exercise.
Which diet is best for you? Choose between omnivore, vegetarian, vegan, flexitarian, pescetarian, or paleo.
Do you have food intolerances or allergies? Do you not like certain foods? No problem, just exclude them from your plan.
Spend less time in the kitchen, easily prep meals in advance or skip meals when you go out to eat. Always adapted to your food budget.
Motivation
Have questions? Get free advice from our nutrition and fitness experts via Live-Chat and email.
All plans are adapted to your goals and your optimal intake of micronutrients and macronutrients.
2. Motivation and benefits of weight loss
A look in the mirror or at the scale is many people’s biggest motivation to lose weight. Many others are motivated to reduce obesity-related symptoms like joint pain and reduced mobility. Weight loss can also significantly reduce other symptoms of being overweight, such as fatigue, depression, lethargy, or mental imbalance.
If you are overweight, losing weight can first and foremost increase quality of life and can be a game changer if you feel stuck and want to change your life. Ever heard of people who lost weight and then thought that life was better before? Not satisfied when you get on the scale or look in the mirror? Weight loss can be a game changer for your health and happiness. You are only a small step away from making a change. Check out our BMI Calculator to determine your optimal weight.
Make it easy: Our personalised meal plan for weight loss helps you take the first step, and then every step along the way to reaching your goal. From weekly shopping lists, to exact guidelines on when, and how to prepare the delicious and nutritious meals, to tips for shaping your life around a focus on weight loss. You will find everything you need to lose weight enjoyably here.
3. Example day from your meal plan for weight loss
Make it easy. The meal plan for weight loss is not only easy, it’s also delicious, inspiring, & above all healthy.
The personalised meal plan for weight loss supports you with your first step, and then every step along the way to reaching your goal. From weekly shopping lists, to exact guidelines on when, and how to prepare the delicious and nutritious meals, to tips for shaping your life around a focus on weight loss. You will find everything you need to lose weight enjoyably here.
See further details in the picture above.
By the way: Did you know that over 90% of the recipes can be prepared in under 20 minutes?
4. This is what you'll be eating
6. Fast weight loss
When it comes to healthy weight loss, most people lose patience quickly. Often, we hear sentences like “I’ve been doing this for a week and nothing has happened!”. People who think they aren’t seeing results quickly enough often let their discipline go down the drain.
6.1. Fast weight loss - Is it even possible?
Let’s put the whole thing in perspective: How did you get overweight in the first place? Probably not overnight. Often, weight gain happens gradually over time, as the result of poor diet and lifestyle choices.
Your body isn’t a transformer that can change its shape instantaneously. Change takes time. Many people put their faith in quick-fix fad diets instead of making the effort to make long-term changes in their eating and exercise habits. That being said, if you consistently follow the meal plan for weight loss for just one month, you will lose weight. If you are disciplined from day one and stick 100% to the guidelines, you will lose weight much faster.
6.2. Factors that influence weight loss
How much weight you lose, and how quickly you lose it, depends on several different factors. The higher your weight is at the beginning, the faster the pounds will fall off. If you’re ready to cheat and follow an intensive exercise plan, you’ll also lose weight faster. That being said, the longer you have been overweight can play a role. The longer you’ve been overweight, the more time you should allow for your body to lose the weight.
6.3. "Can I lose ... kg per week?" – This is what science says.
Crash diets are rarely successful and even less sustainable. Such sudden changes are perceived by your body as an attack on your health. Your body quickly adjusts your metabolism, to quickly get back the lost pounds. With the meal plan for weight loss you can realistically lose about 1 kilogram per week and stay healthy. Don’t get discouraged if you lose less than 1 kilogram per week. Even with smaller losses, after 3 months, you will have lost a lot of weight. The meal plan for weight loss also allows you to lose weight without going hungry- this is very motivating as you continue on your way to success.
Don’t have time to cook? No problem. Your nutrition plan not only adapts to your diet preferences, such as vegan and paleo, but also adjusts to your schedule and lifestyle. So how about a weight loss plan which requires just 15 minutes of cooking per day? Excuses were for yesterday, your future starts today.
7. Tips & tricks for weight loss
If you have the time and motivation to begin working on your weight loss goals, then these tips and tricks can help. With these tricks nothing stands in your way to reaching your goal weight.
7.1. Negative factors for weight loss
Work, family, and everyday stress make it harder to resist the temptations of small extra snacks. These extra snacks quickly add up to hundreds of calories that are not in your calorie budget. What’s worse, additional snacking, particularly snacking on sweets, is proven to make you feel hungrier and get cravings faster, so that overall, you tend to eat more.
7.2. Positive factors for weight loss
Keep your eye on the prize and your motivation high: post notes and photos that motivate you around your home and office. This way when you’re tempted to snack, you’re reminded of your goal and encouraged on your way to success.
7.3. Improve your shopping behaviour
Shopping behaviour: Limit your grocery purchases to what’s on your shopping list. That way, you avoid the unhealthy shelves and won’t grab additional snacks. Stay away from the snack table in the office and the cafeteria and avoid the unhealthy shelves in the supermarket. Out of sight out of mind.
7.4. Correct snacking or eating behaviour
Since over 80% of those who are dieting cannot resist the urge to snack after a while, we dedicate a paragraph to them.
Snacking on sweets can sabotage even the best laid weight loss plan: studies show that only a few manage to reach their desired weight and maintain it long-term. The reason? The sweet tooth in you!
Our brain is programmed to favour foods with a high energy density, particularly things that are sweet and fatty, such as candy bars, pies, and cakes. In times of chronic food shortages, it was an advantage to get so much energy into the body at once. Today, however, it’s like a curse, as these foods are always available and our brains have not yet developed a defense mechanism against the addictive effects. Snacking is not a taboo. However, you should burn more energy every day than you consume, because only then will you lose weight. (With the weight loss nutrition plan, you can specify your snacking preferences – we will account for this in your plan!).
Exercise helps you burn more energy. You should not reward yourself for the extra activity with the wrong treats. Otherwise the positive effects of exercise will be lost. If you want to succeed, be consistent and don’t sabotage your success by eating the wrong snacks.
By the way: with Cerascreen - Upfit, it’s no problem if you like to snack. When you fill out your initial questionnaire, state your snacking behaviour and you’ll get healthy snacks adapted perfectly to you, your body, and your goal.
8. Weight loss success killer
We’ve already described in detail the benefits of losing weight with a meal plan. Losing weight is very easy with Cerascreen - Upfit – we create your meal plan according to your body data, as well as your lifestyle (e.g. snacking preferences, favourite cooking times, etc.). If you follow your meal plan for weight loss consistently, nothing will stand in your way to shedding those pesky pounds and reaching your desired weight.
Many little things can help you develop discipline with your meal plan and make losing weight even easier. Below are the most common calorie traps, as well as healthier and lower calorie alternatives.
8.1. Good organisation
When losing weight, it is helpful to have an orderly daily routine. As already mentioned, stress and, above all, time pressure can affect your willpower and motivation.
Organise well. A simple trick: Plan your daily routine by writing a list on paper or in your cell phone.
8.2. Get enough good sleep
Sleep is a highly underrated factor of healthy weight loss. Sleeping at least seven hours a night greatly improves your willpower, your blood sugar, and your energy levels.
Try to get into the habit of getting to bed earlier and you will soon feel the difference. Really good sleep is when you fall asleep within five minutes and don’t wake up until the next morning.
If you have trouble falling asleep, try actively relaxing, taking a magnesium supplement, and switching off all screens (computer, cell phone, television) one hour before sleeping. These are three simple and proven ways to improve your sleep.
8.3. Exercise & weight loss – What to consider
As already described, with the weight loss meal plan, it is possible to lose weight without exercise and additional training. However, if you increase your activity, you will lose weight faster.
Experience with exercise can be helpful. If you already exercise regularly, you know the effort it requires, but you also know the good feeling that follows. It will be easier for you to burn extra calories during workouts and speed up your healthy weight loss. For all others: suffer the pain of discipline – or suffer the pain of regret.
With exercise, your primary concern is to burn calories: Try trading long distance runs and power walking for short, intense workouts. Interval runs, Tabata, HIIT, and strength training burn more calories and fat in less time than long distance runs.
Afterburn is caused by the calorie deficit generated in sports. Fat cells are mobilized and fed to the energy cycle. This fat burn is an effect that extended, low intensity runs cannot provide. The long-lasting stress of low intensity runs can even send signals to your body to create reserves.
If you want to achieve your target weight faster, you should train intensively 2-3 times a week for about half an hour. This gives you the ideal support for your weight loss plan.
9. Carbohydrates, proteins, and fats (macronutrients)
You will have already read it in other weight loss guides and articles: Sugar is poison to losing weight. Sugar has a bad effect on your insulin management, your blood sugar, causes hunger attacks, and becomes fat in the body.
9.1. Fat in the diet vs. reducing body fat
Yes, you are reading this correctly: Sugar is more likely to become stored as fat in your body than fat itself. The classic table sugar (sucrose) is a double sugar, consisting of one-part glucose and one-part fructose. Sugar has many names and comes under the generic term carbohydrates. Long-chain carbohydrates, such as potato starch, are far less bad for the metabolism than short-chain carbohydrates such as sugar, but in general it makes sense to reduce all carbohydrates in the diet for healthy weight loss.
9.2. Everything about "healthy fats"
Many diets are based on unscientific, unhealthy strategies that are not very successful. For example, reducing fats doesn’t make much sense for losing weight, because your body needs fat to make hormones and neurotransmitters, transport vitamins, and also keep your body burning fat. The important thing is to eat healthy fats. Fried fats, called trans fats, belong to the unhealthy variety and should be avoided. Hardened fats, which are common in processed foods, are also bad for your body. Among other things, they promote fat deposits in organs and blood vessels.
9.3. Cholesterol
For example, you can get healthy fats from cold-pressed oils, nuts, avocados, and eggs. Wait, eggs? Aren’t they bad for my cholesterol level? No, because your body regulates its cholesterol internally. The cholesterol contained in eggs has no effect on cholesterol levels. But eggs contain tons of good proteins, vitamins, minerals and fats – they are a nutritional powerhouse. What you should omit is foods such as bacon. Bacon contains trans fats, which in turn raises your LDL cholesterol – not a good idea. Good fats, on the other hand, ensure a stable blood sugar level and prevent, among other things, food cravings.
9.4. Protein
Overall, protein has the biggest positive impact on losing weight without hunger. If you have a high protein content in your diet, you’ll be less hungry, have fewer food cravings, and maintain your muscle mass while shedding pounds. In addition, according to studies, it is much easier to maintain a diet plan for weight loss in the long-run if you eat less carbohydrates and eat more more protein.
10. Foods for weight loss
These little helpers can accelerate weight loss simply and effectively. You don’t have to rely on any unnatural weight loss supplements because Mother Nature has given weight-loss-promoting powers to various whole foods.
Here is our top 10 list:
- Cinnamon / increases insulin sensitivity, increases metabolism / 1 or ½ tsp per day
- Cayenne pepper, chilli / thermogenic, increases metabolism (up to 15%!) / depending on the taste of the meal
- Nuts / high saturation, regulate blood sugar / about 100 g per day
- Ginger / thermogenic, increases metabolism / depending on taste, in tea or food
- Caffeine, coffee / increased metabolism, stimulates fat burning / double espresso after eating or before training
- Water / stimulates metabolism, increases satiety, transports nutrients / 3-4 liters per day, with a slice of lemon or lime
- Green Tea & Green Tea Extract / Increases metabolism, increases fat burning / in drinks about 500mg at meal times or throughout the day
- Chia seeds / digestive, increase satiety, regulate blood sugar levels / about 2 tablespoons a day
- Eggs / increase satiety, regulate blood sugar / 1-4 eggs for breakfast
- Coconut oil / energy supplier, stimulates metabolism / up to 4 teaspoons a day for cooking, in coffee
11. Weight loss do's and dont’s
Successful weight loss is not a mystery, it’s simple math with a few clear rules. The previous texts have given you a good overview of what to look out for if you want to lose weight healthily. Here are the most important influencing factors summarised as do’s & dont’s:
11.1. Summary - Weight loss do's
- Drink a lot of (cold) water.
- Eat spicy foods if you can handle it.
- Make sure you sleep for at least 7 hours.
- Do intensive exercise little and often.
- Eat lots of protein, vegetables, and some healthy fats.
11.2. Summary - Weight loss dont’s
- Avoid eating sugar. Substitute sugary foods for naturally sweet foods.
- Avoid alcohol. Alcohol leads to organ fat in your abdomen and slows down your metabolism. You can do without it.
- Manage Stress. Stress leaves you undisciplined, avoid it.
- No snacking. Many studies show that small, frequent, snacks can quickly add up to hundreds of extra calories and sabotage any diet plan. Eat only what is in your meal plan.
- Don’t let others persuade you. People who want to tempt you to deviate from your plan may not understood what it’s about. Explain it to them! Surround yourself with people who understand and support you. That makes losing weight a lot easier.
Having a hard time creating your own weight loss plan or following the “weight loss do’s and don’ts” list? Then make it easier on yourself: with an individual Cerascreen - Upfit meal plan, losing weight has never been easier. Just click on “Create meal plan” and start now.
12. Weight loss & the yo-yo effect
You finally made it. You reached your desired weight, and suddenly a new opponent appears on the horizon: the yo-yo! Unfortunately, many people lose weight and gain it right back. Why is that exactly?
The yo-yo is a symbol of our own impatience or complacency. It is especially likely to happen after going on a radical starvation diet. As described above, your body recognizes rapid weight loss as a threat and adjusts its metabolic and activity levels to regain weight.
Or you finally reach your goal weight and indulge in a victorious winner’s meal, then a victory celebration with a few drinks, then take a one week break from strenuous exercise, because you deserve it… the list goes on. The sad truth is that after dieting, many of us return to the bad eating habits and ways of life that got us overweight in the first place.
At the same time, your lower weight means that your energy consumption is lower than before, so after losing weight, your metabolism will be reduced for a while. This means that the effects of bad eating habits will double. However, if you maintain your discipline, routine, and meal plan after reaching your goal weight, you can avoid the yo-yo effect altogether.
