Can you lose weight just by eating healthily?

[servingwench]

Hello! I have followed diets for years...and if you keep to them, they work...however I am bored of counting points or not mixing food groups etc and I want to know is eating healthily good enough? I'm not even sure I even know how to do this anymore! Is a jacket potato healthy??

Feel that my head is fooked up with regards to food!!
I do run 2-3 times a week so at least I do some exercise and this may help my lardy arse!

Maybe everyone's just busy but it's very depressing that no-one has replied to this yet! YES YES YES for 99% of people, healthy eating + exercise = healthy body.
You've hit the nail on the head in your first sentence - they work if you keep to them because they generally aren't sustainable long term, either because they are too expensive or too low in calories.
Sorry if it sounds boring but it's just about balance and not seeing food as an 'issue' - I have a "pudding night" once a week or so but I don't feel bad about it afterwards as I also eat tons of fruit, veg and wholegrains.
Some people worry that healthy food will be boring but that's just because junk food / ready meals are loaded with salt - your tastebuds do adjust once you start on the good stuff!
It sounds like you are going in the right direction with the running and rejection of the hideous diet industry - just get a load of cookery books out the library (vegetarian books are full of good ideas, just use the recipe as the side dish and add meat if you want!) and start experimenting!

You will not lose weight unless your calories expended are greater than the calories taken in, even if 100% of those calories come from lettuce.

However, lettuce and other green leader vegetables are generally very high in quality nutrition and very low in calories so you can have an ENORMOUS green salad (all kinds of different salad leaves) and you would be pushing it if you ate 200 calories.

Or you could have a Danish pastry or doughnut with virtually nothing of nutritional value in it and have eaten 300+ calories.

You can therefore eat tons of low quality foods that make you fat and unhealthy and STILL not be getting adequate nutrition. So you feel hungry and unsatisfied.

Eat lots of fibre (loads of veg. esp green veg) fruit, and whole wheat, plus legumes (beans, lentils). You really do not need much of any kind of animal products such as meat, eggs and dairy on a weekly basis. A small amount a few times a week is fine.

If you drink soda such as coke it has tons of SALT in as well as sugar so ou will end up feeling thirstier and hungrier if you drink it. Also the caffeine in coke makes you pee out any free water so you want another drink. It's basically not food but just crap that doesn't give your body anything you need except then we wonder why we are overweight?

First easy thing to do is just drink fresh water - no soft drinks or wine etc (for a while, when you want to lose weight) water has 0 calories and is what your body wants! Most other drinks (except fruit/herb teas with no milk) have lots of calories. You're drinking yourself chubby.