Weight Loss And Diet

From WebHealth

Weight loss and Diet (choose a diet topic)

Introduction

Analyzing our eating habits

Changing eating habits

Eating out

Shopping for the right foods

Food safety

Attitudes and our health

[edit] Weight Loss And Diet

[edit] Introduction

You have met the team players in your nutrition. The proper structure of the team is called a healthy diet.

Scores of books regarding weight loss ( weight watcher, weight loss program, weight loss diet) have been published and bought, and for a while the one or the other will be considered the leader. Usually there will be a few "miraculous" claims, and after a while the big firework of promises quietly fizzles out. Very often we are looking at a diet of extremes (the banana diet, the fat-burning grapefruit diet, just to name a few).

The refrain will remain constant: the dieter "goes on a diet". This already points to the next step: he or she will go "off the diet". Surprise? Not really! After 4 weeks of nutritional boredom you too would hate to look another banana in the face or even think of a grapefruit. You've had it! No more. You may salivate at the thought of steak and turn your attention to a steak diet: all the steak you want to eat ! It won't work either: you'll be turned off too after a while of this dietary escapade. Actually, you are playing russian roulette with your health. You ate vast amounts of protein, and your kidneys will be working overtime to eliminate the unusually high amounts of waste products.So let's try fasting. It sounds like giving your body a "rest". It certainly has always had an appeal especially with the crowd of people who want to lose weight quickly. To their disappointment they are in for an exercise in frustration.

After some initial weight loss the body goes on spare flame. Weight loss becomes non-existing or slow, concentration becomes a major effort, energy wanes, irritation runs high. What happened? Our body still needs carbohydrates, protein, and fat to function. If protein does not come in, it's taken from our muscles. One of the muscles by the way is the heart. Obviously we are not doing ourselves a service by a fasting regime. After a good amount of discouragement and deprivation the dieter will become an ex-dieter. Really, nothing has changed. The eating habits have not changed, and the next station is already visible on the horizon: the pounds that have been lost are regained, and eventually things have gone full circle. The next diet sounds like a promise of changes for the better, yet the next disappointment seems already built in. It becomes very obvious that extremes do not work. There are no quick fixes, and dieting based on gluttony ("Eat all the oranges you want and lose 10 pounds quickly") just keeps the dieter in a yo-yo existence of up and down.It's a blow to the emotional well-being, it's as bad for the physical function. If you wait for another diet, don't read on. If you are looking at lifestyle changes that enable you to enjoy the foods that are fuel and pleasure for your body, read on !

Here is a link regarding a sensible diet, the Southbeach diet. However others that are sensible are the Zone diet or a modified Atkins diet (reduce some of the fat and the protein content, increase vegetables and salads). If food is considered like fuel that keeps our systems running, it is obvious, that we have to administer it in a responsible way that is safe. Or if you consider food like a drug, it should rather be looked at as a slow controlled supply of nutrients that is made available to our body. You would question the sanity of anybody who would elect to swallow his cough syrup or his antibiotics as one mega dose just once a day when he is sick! Yet food habits very often are exactly like this scenario. Here is a paper that stresses the importance of a balanced approach to weight loss emphasizing that this demands a lifestyle change on a permanent ongoing basis.

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Weight loss and diet

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References:

1. B. Sears: "The age-free zone".Regan Books, Harper Collins, 2000. Also see Dr. Sears' site.

2. B. Sears: "Zone perfect meals in minutes". Regan Books, Harper Also see Dr. Sears' site.

3. B.J. Wilcox, D.C. Willcox and M. Suzuki: "The Okinawa Program." Clarkson Potter,2001, N.Y., U.S.A.

4. E.L. Rossi: The psychobiology of mind-body healing. Norton &Co., 1986, N.Y., U.S.A.

5. Vitamins and Foods. Audio-Digest Family Practice Vol 49, Issue 29, Aug.7, 2001.

6. P.C. McGraw: Life strategies. 1999, Simon&Schuster Source, N.Y., U.S.A.

7. B. Sears: "The top 100 zone foods". Regan Books, Harper Collins, 2001. Also see Dr. Sears' site.