Alimentation is of course essential. Muscles and diet do not go well together, especially if you are quite sedentary and you’ve just choose a seriously restrictive diet. I choose my diets wisely, I can not risk the loss of muscular tissues while dieting on a solely cabbage soup diet or by trying to eat just fruits and vegetable without any added proteins. I know now that muscles are actually developed by protein usage and if the body lack proteins, then preventing muscle loss while dieting is not possible because your metabolism will start consuming muscular protein to keep the body from starving. In fact, I’ve noticed that whenever I’m on a restrictive diet I lose weight slowly at first, but loose strength rapidly. Well, this is nothing more than the muscular loss that occurs, until the valid proteins from muscles are consumed. Only then the body turns to burning fats.

But preventing muscle loss while dieting is possible. Just because muscles are the ones that get consumed first when you are on a diet it doesn’t mean that I allow them to get consumed. You see, the trick is to constantly solicit them while on a diet, and what better way to solicit muscles than to work them? A constant gym schedule is crucial for me, as a man that wants to remain strong but also wants to eat healthy at least once in a while and occasionally needs a quick or not so quick diet that will decrease the weight to normal levels. I aim to burn fat, without destroying muscles, and I’m pretty sure I have managed to do just that by boosting the exercise schedule whenever I diet.

It’s natural to feel hungrier when you exercise. In fact, I can not keep normal weight loss diets because I do exercise. It’s kind of funny, because I need to eat more than recommended if I want to lose weight efficiently and without loosing muscles. But you see, I burn plenty calories while at the gym, way more than in a usual day, and I believe that the weight shown by my weight scale is to my main focus. I aim to have zero fats and 100% muscles, and that is not necessarily a loss in weight. Of course, it’s absolutely impossible to replace all fats with muscles, and there are persons that don’t even want that. I myself don’t want to look like a body builder…that’s their job. I just want an efficient and fit body, that can remain young for as long as possible, and replacing the muscles or growing new muscular tissue can re-new the skin and inner organs in many ways.

One day, I met an interesting man. He was well in his 50s, and still, he was jogging early morning and from behind, he looked like a teenager. Very athletic and very energetic. I didn’t talk to him; I just passed him and then realized just how old he was. Since them, he remained a living proof that sports are possible at any age and for everyone. It also occurred to me that he is one of the “healthy living” people, eating lots of fruit shakes and raw vegetables, on a constant diet if you wish. Still, he had nice muscles, so sports were the thing that helped him preventing muscle loss. Of course, everything is just my imagination, even the image of him having women-like snacks like salads and then doing some more gym exercises. But, some truth must be in this, because it’s clear that sports and healthy eating keep us younger for longer.

Maybe it would be easier for men to stay connected to weigh loss programs if the society would care for they way they look as much as it cares when it comes to women. I look at my work colleagues, neither of them seems to care what’s happening to their weight, and when I ask them if their wives are happy with them, they simply respond :”Of course she is, I work, I’m a decent man, what more could she want?”. I wonder why women never seem to care about the aesthetic aspect of their partners. Maybe if they did, men would also diet for a living and learn how to diet and still keep great muscles.

Preventing muscle loss while dieting is in my option only a matter of common sense. I mean it’s more than striking that eating something scarce in calories will eventually kill your muscles. And it’s equality stinking that a sedentary schedule will only cause weight gain and muscle loss. Preventing muscle loss while dieting and in general can only be done by building muscles.

Please post your thoughts in a comment below.

When I am setting weight loss goal, I have to consider the fact that I can not reach astonishing performances in a matter of days. I am an experienced person when it comes to dieting, so I already know that a fast diet will do no more than starve my body dry and then allow it to take action fast with the boomerang effect of such diets. There might be beneficial for skinny women that just want to drop two pounds for an evening out, but for a serious weight problem they are not something that can help.

In time, I’ve established a few strategies when setting weight loss goals. They work fine for me, and I always manage to lose efficient pounds whenever I am dieting. The first weight loss goal is referring to the amount of weigh that I want to lose in a certain time frame. I’ve read various articles and also received confirmation from my doctor that a loss of a quarter of a pound a day can be done. So, a reasonable goal is to lose about 2 pounds a week. But this might be too little when we are talking about tenths of pounds that are seriously endangering my looks and health… I usually choose a middle goal, I mean I will not aim to lose only 2 pounds a week, but at the same time I won’t target unrealistic targets like 30 pounds a week. I think that an average of 6-8 pounds a week is enough for starters, but it also depends on the type of diet.

The second thing I take into consideration when setting weight loss goals are exercises. Regardless of the diet and pounds I’, willing to lose, I make a strict exercising schedule. This includes morning sessions of jogging and also afternoon gym hours. It’s very important to keep this schedule, otherwise even the most restrictive diet will not do its job. I mean, I might lose a lot of pounds a week, but as soon as the diet is over I will gain them right back.

Then, setting weight loss goals will also include the daily calorie intake. Even if the diets that are supposed to work will usually cut in half the calorie amounts, I tend to disregard that, because if I do not eat as much as I need to I will be unable to perform the exercises I have planned, and for me they are more important. If a diet restricts meat consumption, then I will not eat meat, but instead of eating 800 calories of fruits and vegetable a day, I will eat 1400-1500. My usual amount is anyways over 2000 calories, as I usually work out, so cutting back on 500 calories does a real good job. Furthermore, the diets based on greens and vegetables will help me feel better even if I do not count calories. I feel in a way more energetic and that’s probably because they have a high detoxification action.

In conclusion, I am not unrealistic at all when it comes to my weight loss goals. Sometimes, I will also plan the daily meals. Planning ahead raises my enthusiasm and also gives me enough time to find and evaluate various healthy recipes that can fit in that respective diet. Setting weight loss goals and deciding on meal plans is often the thing that makes all the difference in my dieting. Before I started doing this, I used to fail in almost any diet and frequently forgot to eat at certain hours or forgot to count the calories I was consuming.

Don’t think that I am a slim man. I am not. This is why I need dieting constantly. And it would work well, if only I could stop eating unhealthy stuff while I’m not dieting. But the long periods in which I feel able to diet help a lot, and overall, during a period of a couple of years, I have lost lots of pounds and I am a more active and successful man.

Please be sure to come back and leave your thoughts and ideas in a comment.

One of the best free diet meal plans I’ve tried was the one that had a three day plan to be repeated at least 5 time, so basically a two week diet plan.

First Day: You are not allowed to eat anything but fruits. Breakfast: 3 bananas and a fruit smoothie made at home, with apples, apricots, plums, grapefruits or any other fruits you can get your hands on. Lunch: Eat a big salad with vegetables like tomatoes, lettuce, olives, onion, pickles and put nuts in it. Dinner: Have a big slice of boiled fat free meat, with one backed potato.

Second Day: You can eat anything, but don’t go over 1200 calories. Also, eat 6 meals, not just three. Salads, yogurts, fish, fruits, go creative on this one.

Third Day: Focus on vegetables. Breakfast: Have a glass of apple juice then eat fresh vegetables, 350 grams, with a slice of cow’s cheese or a small chicken meat slice. Lunch: Eat a portion of cabbage soup and then have a plate of boiled vegetables with a slice of fish. Dinner: Today, you will go for a diary based dinner plan. This means, yogurt and cereals, milk and cereals with honey, cow cheese with vegetables, rice and cheese, rice and milk and any other combination you can thing of, Dinner should not weight more that 400 grams.

The free diet meal plans that include a seven day diet have always been difficult to follow. And mostly, these diets, when they are too restrictive, will not measure good results in the long run. I’ve tried the dislocated diet, that urges you to eat one aliment a day, and here’s the meal plan I took. I did lose 12 pounds, but immediately after I’ve put 7 of them back on. Some voices say that this plan is not well regarded in the long run.

First Day: Diary products, as much as you want. Milk, cheese, cream, butter. But nothing more, no bread, no nothing.

Second day: Combine bread with cereals and biscuits and basically anything else made from cereal flour or cereals. You can drink water or tea.

Third Day: Eat fresh fruits, drink only fresh fruit juice and water.

Forth day: Eat fresh or boiled vegetables. Do not eat more that two vegetable types at one meal. This means if you want to eat potatoes and tomatoes, that’s all for one meal. You can eat them in any quantity.

Fifth day: Today you eat meat. Veal, chicken, boiled or barbecued. The trick is to eat only meat, no salad with it, no nothing. You can also eat met products as liver pasta, or other similar stuff. Again, as much as you want, but no more than two types of meat products at each meal. You can drink water, coffer and tea.

Sixth Day: Rice. Boiled, backed…in any combination as long as there’s a 90% rice and 10% something else. This means you can add anything into it, even vegetables, meat, sauces, anything. Just keep the percents.

Seventh Day: This is the last day. You have to slowly get accustomed again to healthy eating. So, you will dislocate only meals. Eat one singular aliment at each meal, and snack. Eat milk at breakfast, or eggs, or ham. Have cheese for lunch. And meat for dinner. You can combine thing differently, this is just what I’ve done.

Also, I’ve tried a few combined free diet meal plans that worked wonders, and only because they were made up of healthy aliments and were not making me miss anything.

Breakfast free diet meal plans:

1. Make an omelet without oil. Add a few slices of tomatoes on top of it. Eat it with a slice of cereal bread and a glass of fresh orange juice.
2. Make a muffin from whole cereals. Or eat one already made, but make sure it’s natural. Place on the place 5 raspberries, one banana and half an apple. You will drink water with this breakfast.
3. A yogurt, a bowl with cereals and a glass of blended fruit juice.
4. A glass of milk along side a slice of fish meat with olives and a boiled egg. With bread, of course.
5. One tomato sliced half an apple, one boiled egg and 10 cereal biscuits.

Morning Snack:

1. One apple
2. Two plums and two sweet biscuits.
3. One fat free croissant.
4. One banana and one raspberry.
5. One pickle and one tomato with a slice of bread.

Lunch free diet meal plans:

1. One large bowl of tomato soup, made at home, without meat in it. Then, two backed potatoes with cheese. No bread.
2. Cabbage soup and a slice of bread and two chicken wings with mashed potatoes.
3. Seasonal soup, with vegetables and greens. A slice of barbecue with boiled vegetables alongside. No bread.
4. A big salad with lettuce, onions, tomatoes, olives, almonds, olive oil, mushrooms and tuna. Then, two slices of bread with a glass of milk and honey.
5. Baked rice and chicken, with peppers and tomatoes. Must be made at home, in the oven. Eat it with fresh vegetables and no bread.

Afternoon Snack:

1. A glass of milk and some sugar free biscuits.
2. One fruit.
3. A slice of bread with one of cheese.
4. A smoothie made from at least 5 fruits, including a banana.
5. A fruit salad.

Dinner free diet meal plans:

1. Barbecued vegetables and fish.
2. Boiled potatoes with a vegetable salad with no meat or bread.
3. Cheese and rice, baked in the over and a glass of milk.
4. Half a grapefruit, then a stake with beans and carrots with a slice of bread.
5. A yogurt with cereals, then a fruit salad with almonds in it.

To be frank, even if someone would’ve told me that I couldn’t have cared less, because I was overwhelmed by the idea of not touching cigarettes again. But my struggle with nicotine addition is a completely different story…

Weight gain when you quit smoking is going to happen no matter what you do mostly because most smokers are usually malnourished already. Even if this is not visible in the pounds they weight, they surely lack plenty vitamins and minerals and the protein metabolism in they bodies in all messed up. Also, smokers tend to forget about sports, because if they smoke long enough they will feel unable to do some basic exercises. If I tried to run for only a couple of feet, I would feel a burning pain in my chest and the shorted breath stopped me every time. Also, when I was smoking I was consuming a lot less water than normal. Mainly because with every cigarette I lighted I needed something to go along with it and that was usually a cup of coffee. Drinking all that coffee disallowed by body to feel thirsty…or hungry. After quitting, all the thirst and hunger sensation were back and stronger than ever. I was like being born again, and I was happy to see the food tasting better, but never thought about weight gain when you quit smoking issues. Not at that point.

And the months passed, and everyone was congratulating me and the pounds continued to add until it was obvious that I was beginning to fell tired and unwell again. This time it wasn’t the nicotine and coffee that made me feel like that, this time was all that extra fat that was a new addition to by body. Maybe if you are a bit overweighed by nature you feel differently when you gain a bit of weight, but for me this was like a true torture: each pound seemed to weight as much as ten. I was really tired and I went to see my doctor. All my eating, all the fats and sweets caused me to almost double my weight is less than a year. That was huge and the doctor said that I was almost obese. Me, obese!

At this point I had to turn to those friends I used to laugh at back when I had no weight problems. Now it was their turn to laugh, but they didn’t. Instead they helped me lose the weight I’ve gained. You see, having to deal with weight problems their entire lives changed the way they treat others with the same issues, because they understand. I couldn’t understand before, so I was mean to them. We decided that I needed a diet to return me to normal weight. It took me almost another year to do this, and the weight gain when you quit smoking effects are still visible sometimes, because I didn’t know how to stop in time. The frequent eating I did affected my metabolism in so many ways that it is very hard to speed it up efficiently. Anyway, with lost of efforts, I managed to regain a rather normal weight, but I’m on a regular diet plan. Not really a diet but more like a healthy eating plan: I eat cereals, raw foods and foods that are not very processed and fish or chicken, and also seeds. But the main thing that turned my life around was exercising. Without my daily running hour I would still be overweighed.

If I were to quit smoking again now, with all my knowledge against weight gain when you quit smoking I would do everything quite differently. Maybe a minimal weight gain would still occur, but I wouldn’t double my weight for sure. When you quit smoking you can go for a simple detox diet. That should keep you off eating unhealthy stuff because you are stress at least for one or two weeks. The best choice is a meat free diet or a raw food diet. Then, I would try do exercise the very first day I quit. Since the nicotine is gone, why worry I will get tired? I might be hard at first but things will only get better in time. In a word, I would do everything in my power not to let smoking further ruin my life even after I’ve decided to quit.