Wednesday, May 22, 2013

categories of diet

Eating a healthy diet is of key importance to your weight-loss but we are currently saturated with so much information many people have no idea where to start. There is a substantial market for products which promise to make weight loss easier, quicker, cheaper, more reliable, or less painful. These include books, DVDs, CDs, exercise contraptions, creams, lotions, pills, body wraps, food products and supplements. While some are classified as unhealthy and potentially harmful to general health, others are recommended by specialists. There are endless diet plans and recipes that can be helpful for weight loss, and equally unhelpful.

Head onto Amazon (or any other online book store) and search for ‘diet’ books. The list is endless. Amazon returned 72,748 results. If there is a diet out there, there is a book about it. We certainly don’t have a lack of reading material. But little of it is of value.
Doctor designed! Ultimate diet! Eat more food and lose kgs! Two steps! Boost metabolism! Rapid results! Blast fat! All of them have built in promises that make you think - yes, this one is IT! It’s the answer. We fall for them all but...
only a handful of those books offer, something.

Is it any wonder those who are overweight for a large part of their life and have 10, 20, 30 plus kilos of fat to lose - are confused about where to start and try many options? Most without long term success.

All of these books though fall into five different categories of diets. You will certainly come across them all in your hunt and have maybe tried one or two personally.

Energy Deficit Diets (EDD) For those going on ‘a diet’ this is usually the most common. Energy in vs energy out. These diets promote a controlled eating program that are designed to reduce your calorie intake sufficient enough to promote weight loss at around half to one kilo per week. The huge advantage is they do assist a steady weight loss that promotes using fat as energy whilst maintaining lean muscle. Many though who lack self motivation and drive often find the results too slow to keep them on the program and unfortunately give up before they see any major changes.

Healthy Eating Diets (HED) These diets are based on general healthy eating guidelines. They contain foods which furnish all the nutritive factors in a desired proportion for adequate nutrition. A huge advantage for good health and they will certainly result in a steady and healthy weight loss when moving away from the standard packaged/fast food diet.

Ketogenic Diets (KD) High-protein, high-fat, low-carbohydrate weight loss diets were originally made popular by Dr. Robert C. Atkins. Ketogenic diets allow for unrestricted amounts of meat, cheese and eggs while severely restricting carbohydrates, including sugar, bread, pasta, milk, fruits and vegetables. These diets put your body into a state of ketosis. They do increase the body’s ability to utilise fats for fuel but uncontrolled or unmonitored ketogenic diets can be dangerous and lead to ketoacidosis. This occurs when the level of ketones in the blood get out of control. These types of diets also cause muscle and fluid loss in addition to fat loss.

Starvation Diets (SD) Also referred to as low calorie diets these are often doctor-supervised weight loss plans that use commercially prepared formulas (usually shakes and/or bars) to achieve significant short-term weight loss and are usually around 800 calories per day or less. They also come in the form of fad diets which most of us, if we havent personally tried, have certainly heard of. Fad diets are eating programs that are generally unbalanced, unhealthy and not nutritionally sound. The Cabbage Soup diet, Grapefruit diet, the Three Day diet, just to name a few. You do of course, lose weight fast but you will trigger the survival mechanism in your body and you will begin using muscle as energy rather than your fat stores and then slow your metabolism down even further. Red flag stay away from diets at all costs. Losing weigh fast is never a viable solution.

Specialised Nutrition Diets (SND) These are diets often designed by naturopaths, dieticians and nutritionists to either meet a sport specific need, an allergy or other health issues. Weight loss may result due to cutting specific foods out of the diet, for example, gluten free diets but they are not usually designed with weight loss as priority.

Do you want really to lose weight? There really is no secret, nor confusion. Whatever ‘style’ of diet you choose, you want one that can be sustained for the rest of your life. That narrows choices down doesn’t it? Slow weight loss may not be as exciting, but it is the only safe way to lose fat. Focus on your health not weight. Change the foods you eat to be wholesome and for their nutritional value so you improve your health, then simply continue getting healthier. Day by day. Shift the focus from weight loss to gaining life!

No matter where you’re at right now, you must strive to improve. Make one step towards that, today. Ann

 
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