Wednesday, November 01, 2006

How to Select the Best Diet for You?

Diet Resource Site

Diet Articles

How to Select the Best Diet for You?


In the old West tricksters sold a snake oil to the unsuspecting cowboys. That snake oil was supposed to cure all illnesses. Now in the Internet country it is a miracle diet that promises to bring instant slimness to your body and cure all health problems. They offer those diets as Perfect Body Solution.

Hundreds of diets compete for your attention with enthusiastic claims from its supposed users. Those diets claim to aid those who suffer from colds, flu, allergies, backaches, muscle aches, headaches, and even impaired memory. There is usually no attempt to back those claims with reliable scientific evidence.

How can you know which diets are helpful, and which are variations of the old "snake oil" formula? There are three major approaches used by all diets:

1. Reduce the damage already done. The diets called 'Fat burner' or 'Fat loss accelerator' attempt to break the fat stored in your body and "escort" it out through the normal body waste.

2. Prevent any further damage. The diets called 'Appetite reducers' attempt to decrease your appetite by artificial means in order to prevent any additional weight gains. They also hope that your starved body will use its stored fats to maintain the daily energy requirements and will get thinner in the process.

3. Substitute 'non-fat producing foods' for the high calories offenders. Those diets attempt to educate consumers in the basics of good nutrition. They are effective mainly in the long run, instead of promising instant results.

The worst diets are from the First group - the Fat Burners. They claim to 'Fight the Fat' within your body by influencing the processes of metabolism. They try to increase the metabolic rate of your body in order to burn more calories. Their manufacturers claim that "it will quite literally melt the pounds off you".

They try to convince you that by ingesting a few drops of their potion, you can eat high fat foods, such as chocolate, butter, pizza, hamburgers, and fried chicken, without worrying about putting on weight. Some of them even claim that their diets "prevent the human body from absorbing fat".

The truth must be faced - the only thing that will "melt the pounds off you" is vigorous exercise. The only other effective method for weight loss is exercising restrictions on caloric intake. All other promises are snake oils. The diets, which promise to cause fat loss while sleeping, attempt to exploit our inherent laziness. No one can loose weight by sleeping.

In the best case those diets will do nothing to your body. In the worst case they will mess up your normal metabolism, and might even damage your health in the long run. Some of them increase your blood pressure and stress the circulatory system. You don't want to let those people, who never saw you, to feed you some untested and unapproved medications. Stay away from those types of diets.

The diets from the Second group - 'Appetite reducers' can be effective only in combination with improved nutrition. You need them only if there was something wrong with your appetite in the first place.

We all need balanced nutrition in order to sustain life. If you suddenly curb your appetite, your body will use stored fat for a while, but in the long run you need more than that. You need vitamins, microelements, proteins. If you suddenly stop to eat, you might be damaging your health while improving your figure.

The diets from the Third group, which attempt to change the way you select the foods that you eat, can provide the best solution. They can eliminate the foods with "high-calories" content, while still giving your body everything it needs.

Healthy weight loss is an ongoing project. Learn more about sound nutrition. Don't fall for the promises of "Miracle Diets". They usually don't deliver. There are no shortcuts to better health.

To learn more about how to acquire better things in life, lose weight and save money visit Wise-Consumer.net

Related Links:

Protein: Common or Missing Link?

Weight Loss: Carbs? Or No Carbs?

Give up the Diet

Todays Diets Whats Hot!

How to Design the Perfect Diet

Diet Resource Site

Diet Articles

How to Design the Perfect Diet


All Diets Are Based on the Same Premise: Eat Less Calories and You'll Lose Weight

Diets come in all sizes and flavors and all tend to rely on the formula of less calories, despite their claims to the contrary. The Peanut butter diet is low calorie with some peanut butter at every meal. The Cabbage Soup diet is unlimited amounts of cabbage soup but how much cabbage soup can you really have before you're sick of it, meaning you'll eat less calories? The Atkins Diet, SouthBeach diet even Weight Watchers all are based on the idea that you'll consume less calories than your body requires, hence you'll lose weight. No one at Atkins estimated people would eat two pounds of cheese and a pound of bacon every day, yet some people do just that and then are alarmed when their weight loss stalls.

My present diet includes a small piece of chocolate cake and a quarter pint of Haagen Daz most every night

You can design a diet around any food you want. Like cheesecake? How about the Cheesecake Diet, three very low calorie meals a day plus a tiny sliver of cheesecake equals the Cheesecake Diet. Love french fries? Here's the French Fry Diet: Eat three very low calorie meals a day, with a small order of fries to go, and you've got The French Fries Diet. The chosen focus food is whatever the diet developer wanted, in a scaled back portion so as to provide the common suggested amounts of from 1200 to 1600 calories a day. The fewer calories you have, the faster the initial weight loss; at least that is the expected outcome. Remember the liquid protein fasts (Oprah used this the first time she reached size 10)? Liquid Protein Fasts were once very popular until a few people died, and that put a damper on them in a hurry.

The sad truth is we want to believe the lies of the diet purveyors so badly we'll try anything which is why the diet industry is a multi billion dollar industry. If these diets worked such as The Zone, the Perricone Prescription, Life Choice (opposite of Atkins), the Negative Calorie Diet, etc. wouldn't we slowly see the obesity rates fall, instead of watching them continue to rise?

Design Your Own Diet

A more reasonable approach of choosing foods you love, estimating how many calories would be reasonable for your body size and designed body weight, and then getting started is usually greeted with sneers and jeers. I've heard, "2,000 calories a day? I'll blow up like a balloon!" No you won't. You'll lose weight, although slower than the other more drastic diets, wouldn't you prefer to lose it permanently this time?

How can you lose weight eating 2,000 calories a day? Think about it. The typical adult female eats about 3,500 calories a day, whether you believe it or not. Our typical lady, Carol, eats at McDonalds every day for lunch, grabs a StarBucks Latte every morning on the way to work, drinks four cups of coffee with cream during the day, pops two donuts at breaks, and stops for take-out chicken for dinner. She "treats" herself to ice cream and half a package of Oreo's for dessert. Let's see how many calories that might be:

Typical Adult American Meal Plan:

Breakfast: Skipped, we're watching our figure

Snack: StarBucks on way to work; Caffe Mocha with whole milk and whipped cream, venti (20 Oz) = 530 calories

Total Morning: 530

Lunch: McDonald's Big-n-Tasty with Cheese; 540 calories Super Sized Fries 610 calories Super Sized Coke (20 Oz) 250 calories Apple Pie - 265 calories

Total Lunch: 1665

Snack: Sugar free gum - 0

Daytime: 4 Cups Coffee with half-n-half - 160 calories (from the half-n-half)

Break: Donuts - glazed, two Krispy Kreme - 424

Snacks & Breaks: 512

Dinner: Kentucky Fried Chicken Dinner

3-piece meal: Extra Crispy Drumstick, two Extra Crispy Thighs, Potato Wedges and Biscuit: 1,420 calories

Large Soft Drink (20 Oz): 250 calories

Small Dish Ice Cream (1 Cup): 260 calories

Total Dinner: 1930

Evening Watching TV:

Oreos - 10 cookies (about 1/3 a package): 530 calories

Evening Snacks: 530

Grand Total: 5,167

You may think that's ridiculous but I think it's conservative. You maybe wouldn't have had exactly this menu but the point is we're eating far more calories than we realize.

If you cut back to 2,000 calories a day, you'd be eating far fewer calories and you'd likely lose a pound a week or more. If you don't think that's fast enough you're probably going to remain overweight. Your body cannot add or subtract muscle and fat any faster. Faster weight loss is water loss and comes back as soon as you resume eating regular foods. Remember, losing it slowly, means losing it permanently. The mathematics are not precise. I lost 80 pounds in nine months which was actually 2.07 pounds per week.

Would You Be Happy if This Time Next Year You Were at Your Goal Weight?

If at the end of a year you'd taken off 100 pounds (or however much you needed to lose if less than 100 pounds), wouldn't you be happy? The more weight you need to lose, the faster it comes off initially. It's not what the scale says that matters though. What matters is do you feel better? Are you able to bend lower and even reach your toes perhaps? Can you get up from a sitting position easier? Is walking more pleasant, are your clothes feeling looser? These are the things that matter. Is your blood pressure back to normal?

Track what you eat for one week, meaning what you really eat. Don't make an effort to eat better or less. That isn't helpful for this exercise. You want to catch yourself being yourself. Get it down on paper, what you really eat on a regular basis. If you eat out you're likely eating far more calories than you realize. We all wonder how it is we can't lose weight, then we drink a 600 calorie coffee drink! Think about it.

Once you have your weekly eating routine on paper, you can take a look to see what changes you could make. For instance, by switching from a Caffe Mocha to a Caffe Latte two days a week you'd save 540 calories right there. Once you're used to that change take it a step further and switch to a Caffe Latte every day and now you're saving 1960 calories a week. One step further and switch to a Skinny Latte (non-fat milk instead of whole milk) and you save another 100 calories every day, meaning you've gone from an additional 3780 calories a week from your morning Starbucks to just 1120 calories a week, or a calorie savings of 2660. This is how you can keep your Starbucks habit, but make a small change and suddenly you're not adding to the problem but you're well on your way to losing that pound a week. The less fancy drink costs less too so you can put that money toward the new clothes you'll be wanting soon.

Track Your Eating and You'll Get a Better Idea of What's Going on

For the next seven days write down everything you put in your mouth and start to get your eating patterns into view. I use a simple software program called the Food & Exercise Diary for Windows. Making an effort to write down my eating helps keep me on track, plus what I've eaten and how much I've exercised six months ago is still at my fingertips. That's especially handy when you develop a routine that works for you because you can always go back and see what you did differently, if you catch yourself regaining weight a year later.

One of the best things I ever did was track my weight workouts and eating habits when I got in shape so many years ago. Now, to reproduce the results I can go back and see what I did before and do basically the same thing again. Learn from your successes, keep a journal. Then, don't make the mistake of cutting back too severely because it's simply not necessary. Just cut back around 500 calories a day and you're on your way with much less trauma in the process.

Design a diet that fits your lifestyle and you've got a winning plan for the rest of your life.

~~ Kathryn Martyn, Master NLP Practitioner, EFT counselor, author of the free e-book: Changing Beliefs, Your First Step to Permanent Weight Loss, and owner of OneMoreBite-Weightloss.com

Get The Daily Bites: Inspirational Mini Lessons Using EFT and NLP for Ending the Struggle with Weight Loss.

Related Links:

Eat Healthy for Life

Avoid These Five Common Weight Loss Mistakes

You Are What You Eat

Why Many Fat Free Diets Do Not Work

How Safe Is the Atkins Diet?

Diet Resource Site

Diet Articles

How Safe Is the Atkins Diet?


The Atkins Diet Seems To Never Go Away

Fad diets come and go, but The Atkins Diet, a high-protein, low-carbohydrate weight-loss plan, seems never to go away, no matter how many medical professionals denounce it.

"Low-carb diets have been linked to increased frequency of colon cancer, formation of kidney stones, kidney disease, and even osteoporosis," says Neal Barnard, MD, president of the Physicians Commission for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit research group based in Washington. "The weight loss you see in low-carb diets isn't all that much better than what you see in studies of low-fat, vegetarian diets."

A Pretty Evil Weight Loss Diet

Putting it more bluntly is Kiku Collins-Trentylon, a sports trainer in New York City, who says it's "a pretty evil diet. We all want to sit on our couches, eat nonstop, and have perfect, sculpted bodies. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way."

Meat is the culprit in low-carb diet danger, says Barnard.

"The reason for the health worries is in large part due to red meat," he says. "People who eat meat every day have three times greater risk of developing colon cancer. And then there is the problem of the kidneys. They aren't designed to work on an oil slick of fat."

Big, Fat, High Protein Controversy

In the summer of 2002, however, both Time magazine and The Sunday New York Times Magazine have published much-talked-about stories that say Atkins may not be as bad for heart health as previously believed. These stories were sparked in part by a recent study from researchers at Duke University showing most people who ate a high-protein, low-carb diet for six months lost 20 pounds.

That much was expected. What wasn't expected was that the researchers didn't see strong evidence of the diet causing any health problems. In fact, both LDL "bad" cholesterol and HDL "good" cholesterol improved.

Low Carb Diet Can Produce Significant Weight Loss

The Duke study shows part of why the diet is so popular, it can produce significant weight loss. It also produces it without a lot of annoying calorie counting and the irritability associated with diets.

Known for Easy Weight Loss

"You're not as hungry as with other diets, and that is a really good thing," says Jenny Anderson, an Internet consultant from Mamaroneck, N.Y., who is on the diet. "That makes it easier to stay on it. So does seeing results fairly quickly. One bad thing is that it forbids caffeine, and I had a lot of bad headaches from coffee withdrawal."

Another drawback to the low-carb diet is its severely limited menu options.

"At first, eggs and bacon in butter for breakfast every day is fun, but day after day of only meat and fat at every meal can get tiresome," says Anderson.

So therein lies the controversy. On one hand you have lots of stories of significant weight loss on a relatively user-friendly diet. On the other, you have dietitians and nutritionists who maintain that the weight loss produced is short-term and can threaten a person's overall health, despite the fact that the weight loss itself may have the beneficial effect of lowering cholesterol.

Who is right? Maybe both sides. It provides weight loss at a very high cost to overall health, or at least that has been the prevailing medical opinion.

Low Carbohydrate Diet May Not Be As Bad As We Thought

"There have been reports in the medical literature that say that this low-carb diet may not be as bad as we thought," says Susan Barr, registered dietitian in New York City. "That makes people interested again in this diet, but until there is more research on what stresses the diet places on the body, there is no way to know what it might be doing besides providing short-term weight loss.

You may reprint or publish this article free of charge as long as the bylines are included.

Original URL (The Web version of the article)
How Safe Is the Atkins Diet?

About The Author

Michael Lewis has been collecting articles and information on Weight Loss and HGH (Human Growth Hormone and related health benefits. He has created and edits numerous web sites about this subject. Michael is a staff writer for http://www.ageforce.com and several other websites. If you would like to contact Michael you can e-mail him at Michael@AgeForce.com or if you would like to know more about Weight Loss, HGH (Human Growth Hormone) and related health topics please visit us at http://www.ageforce.com

Related Links:

Low-Carb Diet - Should I or Shouldnt I?

Weight Loss Diets with Negative Calorie Foods

Low-Carb Diets: Are You Losing More than Weight?

Who Said Low Carb Diets Ever Meant No-Carb?