What Makes A Bad Diet Bad?

There are good diets, there are bad diets, and there are very bad diets. There are diets that work, and there are diets that will never work. For the person looking to lose a few pounds in weight, then the weight loss business presents a confusing mixture of what to do and what not to do. However, there are certain pointers that indicate that a particular diet may not live up to its claims, and in fact could be dangerous from a health point of view. Such diets may be termed 'bad diets' not only because of the potential health danger, but also because they fail as weight loss tools. On the other hand, a 'good diet' will retain a wide range of food groups in its plans, together with an emphasis on regular, meaningful exercise. 'Good diets' are those that work and get positive results. Most 'good diets' are recommended and approved by dieticians and the medical profession. The factors that indicate a diet is 'bad' are many, but once a person recognizes these factors then that person knows that these diets should be avoided. Factors to consider: If a diet suggests that exercise is unnecessary, then forget it. All good diets need some level of physical activity - even something as basic as an hour walk. It is impossible to lose weight and keep it off unless regular exercise is included in the way of life. Do not be fooled by a diet that works by causing the loss of fluids. This in itself will cause a reduction in weight during the first few weeks of a diet, but this is only a temporary condition. Once a normal diet resumes the person's weight is regained. It should be pointed out that restricting the body to its needed amount of fluids could be the cause of light-headedness leading to fainting. Remember too that diet programs that require the dieter to buy in selected prepared meals are extremely expensive. The total cost of the program and its duration should be known before starting this type of diet program. Be wary of diets that eliminate particular food groups from being eaten. A selection of all food groups is necessary for optimum health. This maximizes the number and range of vital minerals and vitamins that are needed for good health. Do not be persuaded that missing a meal each day will quickly get the weight down. It will not in the long term, and it may cause medical problems. For this reason, a good diet may suggest the eating of four or five small meals a day instead of the usual three. A diet low in fiber from a limitation of the amount of carbohydrates consumed may lead to constipation. This can be over come by drinking lots of water during the day. A diet rich in fiber content i.e., fresh fruit and vegetables, legumes, and nuts is necessary for sustained weight loss. Be aware that a diet built around a diet pill may be unhealthy and unsafe if the pill has not been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. A diet that restricts a dieter to eating a particular food group to the exclusion of other food groups may be difficult to sustain. The monotony of eating the same food day in day out will lead to the dieter going off the diet. A 'good diet' will ensure a dieter has the widest variety of food groups possible. As in life, variety is the spice of life. For a diet to work effectively, the dieter should be at ease in eating the food prescribed. The food should be enjoyable, tasty, as well as being nutritious. If the food does not meet these basic requirements then the dieter will soon get bored and nothing will be achieved. A diet program familiar to the author is the Low GI Diet. This is much more than a diet - it is a program to help a person achieve a healthy life-style including a weight level that suits the person's height and age. All the normal, everyday foods are eaten - but only the low GI varieties. The diet allows for plenty of lean meats, whether it be red meat, poultry, or fish. Fresh fruit and vegetables are staples of the diet as all are low GI products.

Why Does My Diet Not Work ???

In 1990 I decided to become vegetarian. Well to be accurate Pescetarian - I continued to eat some fish and shell fish. My reasons were mostly because I had become more and more uncomfortable about cooking and eating meat and I disliked the whole idea of killing animals. I also had become very active in the new age movement at the time and the environmental cost of meat production simply did not make sense. It wasn't long before even the thought of eating meat was distasteful and I have never been tempted to eat meat since. However I did start to put on weight and I have continued to battle with my weight now for 25 years. When I changed gender and began taking hormone replacement therapy it got worse. I have tried the weight watchers diet, the lemon diet, the grapefruit diet, the 5:2 diet, the Mediterranean diet. the Beverley Hills diet, the cabbage soup diet, an Ayurvedic Diet, the Atkins diet (really challenging if you are vegetarian), the Paul McKenna Diet, the Think Thin diet - and many more I have now forgotten. In that time the one diet that did work was Sure Slim - This is a very complex and also very expensive diet based on metabolic typing, Low Gi, Low Fat, low carb and personal food preferences. The diet involves blood tests, and an in-depth interview followed by regular weekly then bi weekly consultations. Every meal has to be meticulously weighed with ingredients selected from a quite restricted list. I lost about 4 stone in six months - and then put most of it back on in the net six months. Every year since then I have resolved to lose the weight again and every year I give up after a few months and the weight returns. The problem is that I had stick to a complex diet even to maintain my weight and that made it almost impossible to eat out, or tuck into a buffet, or grab something to eat when on the road, or go to a dinner party. I am sure most of you reading this article will have had similar experiences - and the older we get the more difficult it seems to be to lose weight and maintain good health. However I am not giving up and I have recently begun looking in more detail at the Low carb Low Gi diets to see if I can find a way to simplify this process and find a more acceptable longer term diet that will work. There are a few books that have contributed over the past decade to my growing understanding of diet. Rose Elliot's Vegetarian Low Carb Diet is excellent - though you need to enjoy eggs and tofu to follow that diet in the first 14 days. That said she is one of the leading experts on vegetarian food and her explanations of the basis of the diet have really helped me to understand better the principles of the sure slim diet that worked. Chris Woollams The Rainbow Diet is primarily about how to beat cancer by eating more healthily with a version of the Mediterranean Diet. But if you can beat cancer by changing your diet it's the same process and the same diet to beat heart problems and diabetes and put you on the road to Perfect Health. The book has really helped me to understand how nutrition and the body works and what our diet can do to make it go wrong or make to work better. Why my doctor has not read this book I do not know. Finally a book I came across over 20 years ago which is now out of print but available second hand is The Food Addicts Diet by Tish Hayton. In helping her son overcome a huge problem with allergies to many foods, Tish came to the conclusion that many of us are suffering from food addiction and the foods we are addicted to are wheat, potato, milk and sugar. When I first read it I didn't want to believe it even though I knew it made sense. These four foods are the basis of all convenience foods. Between them they account for about 80% of everything we eat. Putting everything I have read from these and many other books together I am beginning to understand why one diet worked, and why I then put all the weight back on. I am beginning to understand how to simplify my diet so that I can lose weight and keep it off. I have not managed to do it yet - but what I am doing is to record all my progress and will be writing further articles about my journey towards achieving perfect health. My problem has been an addiction to foods that encourage my body to store fat. They are the reason why diets fail because as soon as we come off a diet we inevitably return to the foods that encourage us to store fat. The food industry also knows this but they benefit so much from this food addiction that they are not prepared to even try to tackle the problem. Instead we have been conned and lied to for decades. We have been convinced that the villain is Fats. So we are all obsessed with low fat foods and diet drinks which are loaded with sugar substitutes like Aspartame. But it's not the fats in the food that are stored as fat in the body - it is carbohydrates - particularly simple carbohydrates from grains and sugars. It's not just wheat and sugar. Our bodies need glucose for energy which comes from carbohydrates - any excess carbs are converted to fat as a reserve for times when we don't have enough. In the past this was quite often - but now in the west we simply don't get that hungry. No matter how much you cut down on food, if you give the body more carbs than it needs it will store the excess and it will not burn the fat. The only way to get your body to burn fat is to starve it of carbs. Cut grain, sugar and even starchy vegetables. I have been eating a healthy diet of fruit and vegetables for years thinking that would help me lose weight but it doesn't. Many fruit and vegetables are high in carbohydrates. So the first step in losing weight and keeping it off is to tackle the number one villain - SUGAR - wherever that comes from. Sugar, honey, fruit, corn syrup, maple syrup etc. Sugar is sugar - it is quickly separated into glucose. So my first piece of advice in tackling weight gain and making a permanent change to your diet is that you have to lose your sweet tooth. The more you restrict your sugar intake, the less you will crave it until eventually you will find sugar sickly. It is not going to be easy but if you value your health and want to get to a good long term comfortable weight, your enemy will be sugar and it has to go.

The Importance of Choosing the Correct Diet

How important is choosing a diet? Take a look at the vast quantities of diets that you can choose from. You have low calorie diets, no fat diets, low fat diets and many more depending on who is marketing and writing the diet. Most diets today are retreads from previous diets. Now with newer and much better advertising campaigns it is definitively buyer beware. When you decide to go on a diet it is going to be the single hardest thing that you will undertake short of a life threatening situation. Other vices are hard to give up also or change but you have to eat every day. When you make up your mind that it is time for a diet depending on how much weight you need to lose will depend on how serious you need to be. If you have few pounds to lose any diet that you choose will work. But if you are like a good majority you have thirty or more pounds to lose then your choice will go along way to your success. When you begin to look and choose a diet where do you go? Watch TV a friends recommendation or advertising. Most people choose a diet from these sources and although your friends mean well they usually get their information from advertising or from one of their friends. When looking into a diet you must be ready to be on a diet in some form the rest of your life. If you do not think so, do you truly believe that if you lose weight and reach your goal it will stay off when you back to eating they way you are now? Most people on diets fail because they do not take the time to research the diet and have no idea what makes up a good diet. When choosing a diet you need to be aware of what makes a good diet and what does not. All diet will have certain components that will make them better than others. A good diet will have four major components to a diet. It will have a component that will teach you goal setting and how to do it properly. A book that covers this is How to Choose a Diet along with information that will help you choose your next diet. Goal setting is very important in dieting. If you try yo go on a diet after a period of time most of us will lose interest and quit. Look at goals as you road map to success when you start to waver you take out your goals and refresh them and start losing the fat. The next component will have different ways to start teaching you new habits. You have had many years of bad habits from not eating the correct amounts to eating the wrong foods at the wrong time. These habits need to be broken and re-learned. It will take you approximately 1 ½ months to form a habit. Start a habit like a steel cable. Each cable is made up of many strands pulled tightly together to form one large strand. Each time you eat properly you form a strand. After awhile you will choose the correct portion and the correct food at the correct time. This is what a diet needs to teach you and this is important if you want to lose weight and keep it off. The third component is the diet itself and this can have a few different sections to it. It may have a few phases that you will go through and it will have a maintenance phase that you will need when you reach your goals. This part of the diet is also critical. If you choose a diet that takes a lot of prep time and you do not have this time because of your schedule this diet will be doomed. Read about the different diets and look for the types of food and what you need to do to be able to eat. If you have a busy hectic schedule look for a diet that supplies you with the meals or a diet that makes allowances for prepared foods or restaurants. You need a diet that is flexible so that as you change the diet can change with you. Do not be afraid to check out different diets. A book that gives you a breakdown of today's most popular diets is How to Choose a Diet. The last and most forgotten part of dieting is exercise. Most diets will recognize exercise as an important part of dieting but usually fall way short of giving you any guidelines to follow. Exercise is the single most important thing you can do to help you lose weight. Your body was designed to be used and the more exercise your body gets a whole host of good things happen. The biggest thing that you will notice is that you will lose inches and pounds. You will feel and eventually look better. You need to start off slowly and gradually build your workout to a level that will help you both feel and look better. Exercising daily and this does not even have to be a formal workout. Take the steps instead of the elevator, take a walk at lunchtime instead of sitting, these things and many more can help you lose those unwanted pounds. Exercise can and will make up the difference if you cheat occasionally but you need to know what to do and when. When it comes to Choosing a Diet make sure you have all the information when you choose. Make sure the diet is for you, and you did not choose the diet because some commercial on TV or radio says that you can lose the weight without dieting or exercise. That will not happen, as of now there's no magic pill to make you loose weight and inches. You need to study the diets and choose wisely and not be afraid start over if you find a diet that doesn't work. Need to lose weight and can not decide what diet to go on. Learn what are the important factors in a good diet. Learn what supplements work and which ones do not.