A perfect diet to lose weight- The Step Diet

by Diethics · October 1, 2017

Understanding the balance between the energy intake, the energy expenditure, and how the body stores energy can help us develop strategies to reduce obesity and maintain a healthy weight. And one thing is sure: excessive weight gain can be defeated by reducing the calorie intake and increasing the energy expenditure.

This is the main idea of a diet developed by a group of weight-control experts from the University of Colorado. The diet, called the Step Diet, promotes eating less, but puts the accent on spending more energy by exercising more. It is not necessary to follow complicated and elaborated physical training sessions: it is enough to walk each day. Instead of counting calories, dieters need to count steps and reduce the usual food portions by a quarter.

Counting steps is an easy task: anyone can have a pedometer to help them establish how many steps are made each day. For the first period of the diet, dieters should walk about a mile each day. If the distance is not measured, they can relate to the time factor: 3 walks of 5-minute should be taken each day. Eventually the goal is a walk of 5 miles or 10,000 steps per day. It is not necessary to walk all the 5 miles at once, but throughout the day. As the time goes by, dieters have to walk longer distances because, as they lose weight, their body needs less energy to function, so to continue lose weight they will have to increase the energy by moving more.

The Step Diet rules:

Analyse yourself and determine if you have an eating problem. Understand what triggers it. Try to eliminate the causes of your eating problems.
Walk each day- From 2.000 steps per day for the beginning to 10.000 steps. Walking is heavily promoted by the Step Diet, but other forms of physical exercise like cycling, yoga, swimming etc are perfect substitutes.
Eliminate from your menu the passive and mindless overeating– We all seem to be genetically programmed to eat calorie-dense and high-fat foods. This kind of foods helped our ancestors survive, but we have to fight back this genetic tendency.
Eat 75% of your usual meals– You can eat anything, but your meals have to be 25% smaller. The diet does not provide a list of foods that should be consumed, but if you want to have a healthy body, you should eat healthy and nutritious foods such as fruits, vegetables, healthy fats, lean proteins, nuts, seeds etc .

The Step Diet: a Lunch Sample

3/4 of a Roast beef sandwich with mayo
3/4 of an 1-ounce bag of potato chips
3/4 of a 12-ounce can of coke

The diet is healthy and it can help you lose 1- to 2-pounds per week. The advantage is that the Step diet can be considered by any person, because walking is an activity that people of virtually any age or fitness level can engage in.

“The Step diet- Count steps, not calorie to lose weight and keep it off forever”- James O. Hill, John C. Peters, and Bonnie T. Jortberg;