34. Dietary Flow Chart: How to Use Four Major Nutritional Graphs

For the first three days, we used a simple food flow chart to help us identify the sources of weight gain and practice carefully discerning the feeling of fullness at each meal, checking whether we were eating too much. Next, we delved into the core principle of the food flow chart-ensuring balanced nutrition every day.

The method is very simple: just write down the contents of each meal, compare them with the food chart above, and mark the shapes that represent the food. That's it!

These four shapes represent the four essential nutrients the human body must consume daily. Regardless of whether you are on a diet, everyone needs to eat at least these four nutrients every day. You can check your intake before bed each day, and if you forget to eat a certain shape of food, remember to prioritize consuming it the next day.

The large and small shapes, divided into left and right sides, are designed to address the common consumption of processed and refined foods by modern people. The foods marked in black on the right are low in calories and refined, and should be consumed more frequently during a weight loss period. The foods marked in black on the left are high in calories and refined, and should be consumed sparingly.

With this categorization, checking your food intake daily becomes easy and straightforward. If you suspect you're not losing weight despite not eating much, check the graphs of the foods you've eaten. Are most of them hearts with the left side blacked out? If so, change your diet and ditch the processed foods; it will definitely help.

1. Treat large, round foods as staple foods.

Traditionally, Chinese people eat a bowl of rice or noodles first, then eat it with meat and vegetables, making rice a staple food. Medical biochemistry reports also indicate that high starch intake is a significant factor in obesity among Chinese people, clearly proving the saying "Chinese people get fat from eating too much rice" to be true. During weight loss, try making meat and fish the main dishes and starchy foods the side dishes; this will naturally reduce starch intake.

Large, round foods are high in protein, which is especially important during dieting. They are not only a source of blood and muscle, but also raw materials for various enzymes in the body, and essential nutrients for normal metabolism.

If protein intake decreases, body protein will begin to be deficient. Protein maintains basal metabolism and is a nutrient that must be consumed during weight loss.

Also, it's best to eat these main dishes slowly and thoroughly so that you can feel full for a longer period of time.

While small-sized milk, cheese, and yogurt contain a lot of protein, you shouldn't skip meals and make them your main food source, as some popular methods suggest! Doing so easily leads to nutritional imbalances. Just treat them as important foods. If you can manage to eat a little bit every day, and if you missed a particular food one day, remember to eat more the next day, that's already a great achievement-meaning you're on the right track for healthy weight loss. Trying to lose weight overnight is often counterproductive!

2. Please note the large heart shape and adhere to the principle of serving one serving at a time.

This is a collection of rice, bread, and noodles that have become staple foods.

These carbohydrates (sugars) are an essential source of energy for brain activity, and excessive restriction can become a cause of stress. Many people, fearing weight gain, completely eliminate starchy foods when dieting, which is an overreaction and equally unhealthy. While some sugars, like refined sugar, cause a rapid rise in blood sugar and stimulate insulin secretion, easily leading to obesity, some starchy sugars can stably produce insulin and are less likely to cause obesity.

So it's just a matter of not eating too much of these kinds of foods, but you still have to pay attention to the amount you consume. The standard for a meal is a bowl of rice or a lump of noodles.

3. During weight loss, try to eat more small round foods.

Mushrooms and seaweed are low in calories, so you don't need to worry about portion sizes and can eat as much as you like; they're reliable diet companions. They're also rich in minerals, which aid in the metabolism of carbohydrates and fats, and are essential nutrients for dieting. Furthermore, because they contain a lot of dietary fiber, eating more can reduce constipation. In addition, yellow-green vegetables are rich in beta-carotene, which has a significant effect on preventing skin aging.

When choosing this type of food, special attention should be paid to reducing the consumption of processed foods.

4. The heart-shaped decorations are a highlight of the menu.

Small-shaped foods can help resist stress and strengthen the body. These foods are rich in vitamin C and calcium, and they also contain a lot of fiber, which is very helpful in adjusting one's constitution.

The calorie content of dairy products, in descending order of whole milk > low-fat milk > skim milk, is also a reference standard for selection.

Example explanation:

This is Xiaomei's first day's official food intake record sheet. Her method is to carry a diary in her bag, and immediately write down the contents of the food, when she ate, how long it took, and how full she felt at the time after finishing her meal. When she gets home, she checks the form and fills in the food categories.

On the first day, lacking experience, she spent some time looking up the "marking method." She initially thought it would be difficult, but after looking it up once, she almost memorized it. Her method was: meat was marked with a large circle, starchy foods with a large heart shape, fruits and vegetables with a small circle, and dairy products with a small heart shape. For foods that had been treated with a lot of oil, sugar, or additives, she would mark the left side of the large and small heart shapes with black, and for foods that tasted their original flavor, she would mark the right side with black.

As for the hot pot we had with colleagues on the first day, those with more meat were called "big round" and those with more starch were called "big heart" or "left". That makes it clear.

For Xiaomei, this day's diary entry was quite a shock. The usually beauty-conscious woman realized she hadn't eaten a single small round dumpling (a source of fiber) all day, and her stomach was completely full at both lunch and dinner. If she hadn't written in her diary, she wouldn't have understood how she'd spent her entire day! So that evening, she reminded herself to prioritize eating small round dumplings the next day. Furthermore, she questioned whether eating so much was necessary. She seriously reflected on it and realized that feeling so full was actually quite uncomfortable, likely because she ate too quickly-finishing a bento box in 15 minutes. If she could take 25 minutes or longer, she believed she wouldn't unconsciously overeat.

Common knowledge

There are basically no taboos about what to eat or what to do when using the cocktail diet.

Habits formed over a long period can have the opposite effect if changed abruptly. Start by reducing the frequency of changes, gradually eliminating all habits that contribute to obesity and establishing new ones that become part of your life. In any case, the "beginning" is crucial.