The Best Diet for Someone Who Wants to Lose Inches

Losing inches can be a daunting task, but if you make healthy food choices, you can actually lose the weight for good. Fad diets and celebrity-endorsed diets may bring fast results, but usually, they focus on certain foods and neglect the overall health equation of a balanced diet. The best weight loss diets focus on foods low in saturated fats and calories and high in fat-busting capabilities. This formula helps to limit unwanted calories intake and keep your weight down in the long run.

Limit Empty Calories

• The kind of food you eat can determine the number of calories you put into your body. Excess calories not burned by the body are stored away as fats. By this reasoning, it makes sense to make wise food choices. A simple rule to remember: proteins and carbohydrates carry four calories a gram, while fats have nine calories a gram. If you drink alcohol, it provides seven calories a gram. Work within this mathematical framework and make healthy food choices. If you need a Starbucks grande (16 oz.) caffe latte to start your day, you have easily ingested 190 calories and a snack bag (3 oz.) of nacho-flavored tortilla chips carries a whopping 424 calories. If you cut off these unhealthy choices and replace your morning get-up with a cup of morning tea (zero calories without milk and sugar) and your snack with low-fat fruits or yogurt, you cut off unnecessary (empty) calories. Less empty calories equals less fat stored away.

  Limit fast food and processed food and snacks, as they generally have more saturated fats and are high in calories.

Load Up on Fruits and Vegetables

• Fruits and vegetables are high in water content, fiber and low in fat calories, making them an obvious group to include in this weight war. They fill you up without hefty caloric count and their high levels of vitamins, minerals and fiber can reduce risks of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and cancer. A new study from Japan found that antioxidants found in colorful fruits and vegetables, also known as anthocyanins, are powerful agents against fat cells and can be used to prevent weight gain. Anthocyanins modify the function of fat cells and prevent fat accumulation.

  To make fruits and vegetables the main focus of your meal, always fill up half your plate with vegetables and leave a quarter for protein and the last quarter for whole-grain carbohydrates. Great vegetable choices include carrots, spinach, tomatoes, purple cabbage and bok choy. Instead of store-bought snacks loaded with saturated fats and chemicals, snack on fat-busting anthocyanin-loaded fruits like apples, grapes, strawberries, plums, blueberries (or any kind of berries) and kiwis. These healthy choices can tide you through hunger attacks and help you limit unnecessary fat calories intake.

Fat-Busting Proteins

• You don't have to cut out proteins in order to cut inches. Lean meat and low-fat dairy products contain the healthy type of unsaturated fats known as conjugated linoleic acids that can help burn abdominal fat. According to Mark Stengler of Natural Physician's Healing Therapies, conjugated linoleic acid helps to transport glucose into muscle cells more effectively and as a result prevents the glucose from being converted to fats. When less fat is stored, you are naturally trimmer.

  Choose lean meats such as chicken, turkey, fish and low-fat dairy products like yogurt, cottage cheese and mozzarella. Dairy products made from grassfed animals have three to five times more conjugated proteins than animals fed on grains.