When it comes to what to eat and lose weight, no matter what kind of plan you are following or creating for yourself, there's going to be a few key rules you're going to want to keep in mind. They are as follows:

1. Eat what humans are designed to eat.

Every living thing on this planet, human or otherwise, has a list of natural foods they are designed to consume and process. Here's the thing, though - for each living thing, their list is much more indifferent to nutritional value than one would think. Any given food on their list could be ridiculously high in cholesterol, calorie content, etc. and it would still be considered one of the healthiest foods that living thing could eat.

Consider the tiger, a carnivore. A tiger's diet must consist entirely of red meat, which of course it obtains by slaughtering and consuming wild animals day in and day out. Red meat? You mean that stuff with ridiculous amounts of fat and cholesterol? The food which raises the risk of cancer, stroke, and heart attacks, according to a million different doctor reports and vegan blogs? So why do tigers prosper instead of dying out all over the place? Simple - because tigers' bodies are designed by nature to thrive on red meat. Even if wildebeests and zebras came with nutrition labels that tigers could read and comprehend, it matters not. If they ate a fat free, low-carb, low-calorie vegetarian diet, they would die.

Now, the story is a bit different for us human beings, because we're omnivores. We eat meat and vegetables. We have more room to diversify our diet than tigers do; vegetable-only diets are certainly possible for us. However, the premise is still the same. For humans, there is a list of foods we are specifically designed to process and consume, in order to optimize our body's functionality and health. Everything else, we should not be eating. It will either pass through us, get purposelessly stored in physically unflattering areas, or cause digestion problems of all sorts, because it's not meant for us!

Your car is not going to go far if you pee in your gas tank instead of putting gas in it. The same is true with the food you eat.

Eating what you're supposed to eat according to biological design is the concept that the Paleo diet is largely based on, and the fundamental reason why it works so well. If you want to really dive deep into this subject, that is the diet I would recommend researching.

For the time being, I want you to immediately cut as much of the following out of your diet: bread, dairy, sugar, and processed foods. With a couple of exceptions (i.e grass fed butter, plain Greek yogurt depending on how your body takes it), your body wants no part of these foods. At all. When you eliminate these foods, you will start feeling better almost immediately. Stick to eating meat, vegetables, nuts, fruit, and eggs - combined with exercise, you will begin getting in shape easily.

Note that this description is inclusive to many foods you may think of as fattening, such as steak and bacon. That is correct - those foods are fantastic for us! "But wait", you might say - "Those foods are full of fat and calories! There's no way I won't get fat and out of shape if I eat a ton of bacon!" This concern actually segues nicely into the second item on the list...

2. Do not eat for any reason other than "I am hungry".

The biggest reason we eat too many calories is because we eat for so many different reasons other than "to give our bodies fuel". You know, the entire point of eating. But so many of us eat for other reasons. We eat because we're bored. We eat for comfort. We eat the good tasting food because it tastes good. (I'm from the Chicago area, so you already know I can get trouble with that last one)

Meanwhile we've totally lost sight of whether we actually need more fuel, and if so, whether the food we're eating is right for the job. If we don't, and it's not, this is where the weight gain starts. If you eat only food you are supposed to eat, and only when you're hungry, this will never happen.

This can be tricky in the beginning, especially if you currently eat a lot of sugar. Sugar messes with your insulin levels, by making them spike, and insulin is one of the major components of your body's "hunger meter". This can cause you to feel like eating, which is very different from needing to eat. However, what you'll notice after resisting the urge to eat sugary food for a while, is that the urge will still go away. Even though you didn't eat anything. That's because you were never actually hungry in the first place!

Your body has the only calorie counter you will ever need, and once you get in tune with it, you will never have to count a calorie or carb again. And you will lose weight, and feel incredible. Speaking of feeling...

3. Eat what makes you FEEL good, not what tastes good.

If you've never felt it before, it's truly one of the weirdest feelings to crave a food for every reason besides how it tastes. Yet, when that switch flips in your brain after a couple days of discipline, it is arguably the most important change you'll make when it comes to how you consider the food you eat.

If your diet is less than ideal at the moment, what you may not realize is how terrible the food you eat is actually making you feel. You're running on a gas tank full of pee. If you're not paying attention to this, then the only real factor is how good the food tastes. This is why it may seem strange when you see someone in excellent shape, eating non-tasty food.

Why would someone ever choose a bunless turkey burger and steamed vegetables over a slice of deep dish pizza? The answer is because those people have tapped into an entirely different reasoning for eating: because the food makes them feel incredible. It's not even because they're super disciplined. They genuinely want to eat these things! Even when they're not as delicious as a pint of Ben & Jerry's! And this can be true for you as well, but you need to make yourself see the light.

I remember when I first started eating healthier, eating chicken salads and abstaining from bread, wondering how I was ever going to make it to my first cheat day. Then, two weeks in, I realized I had actually skipped over the cheat day I was supposed to have, and I didn't even care. Two months later, I decided to have a cheat day... and it was awful. I tried to pull my old stunt of eating an entire large Pizza Hut pizza in one sitting, and only made it 3/4 of the way through, and it was the worst feeling in the world.

It was that day that I realized these foods I used to love were actually wrecking my body. I have never tried that again since, and never will. I only eat what gives me the most vitality and energy, period. Taste is secondary. When this becomes true for you, dieting will be a cakewalk (not literally).

Now, there's one other point I want to make on this subject. I think we can all agree that if you eat pizza and ice cream for six days of the week, and eat salad for the other, you're still going to gain weight and be unhealthy. However, and this is very important: the reverse is also true. If you fully accustom your body to eating nutritious foods, eating cake and pie one day out of the week is not going to ruin you or your diet. In fact, you'll likely notice when the cheat meals are starting to make you feel bad again, and you'll naturally want to go back to the good stuff.

Conclusion

As you read through this, you may have started to see how these rules are related to each other, and from that, you'll be able to understand the concept behind how you should be viewing food and dieting in general. You can do whatever diet you like, so long as it revolves around eating food you're designed to process, only eating when you're truly hungry, and eating food for the feeling it gives you rather than the taste. Determining what to eat and lose weight is key when getting in shape, and it's very simple when you keep these rules in mind.

Best of luck, and as always, if you have any concerns or questions, feel free to comment below!