Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Sane Dieting

In the face of all this bad news, what’s a calorie-compromised person to do? The best advice is to learn from the dangers of kamikaze dieting. Unless you’re morbidly obese (with a BMI over 40), don’t strive for the massive weight changes that get all the applause on Extreme Makeover. Instead, take the more cautious, careful approach outlined here:

• Have patience. Dramatic weight-loss is unsustainable. What’s the point in a twoyear plan for extreme weight loss if all you get is six months of skinniness? Instead, make lifestyle changes you can sustain forever. Focus first on preventing weight gain, and then aim to lose small amounts at a time. And don’t abandon your plan after one binging disaster. Instead, expect occasional setbacks and work through them.

• Instead of removing bad foods, add good ones. After all, if you take all the food that nutritionists have ever criticized out of your diet, you’ll be left with meals of Melba toast and oat bran (until the Atkins followers snatch that away from you, too). So concentrate on getting the benefit of good, nutritious food. Add one new healthy food a week, and before you know it, you’ll have crowded most of the bad stuff out of your stomach.

• Don’t invite extra calories into your home. To avoid binging on junk food, keep it out of your shopping cart in the first place. Once the food is in your house, the dynamic changes from “Why should I eat this?” to “I’m obviously going to eat this—why not now?”

• Keep eating the fat. Fat allows your body to build essential compounds and slows the digestion of your meal, helping you feel full. Cut out all the fat, and you’re likely to fill the void with something else—like a second serving of carbohydrates. Furthermore, the Nurses’ Health Study—a well-respected, longrunning study that tracks the health of over 100,000 nurses—suggests that there is no link between total fat consumed and heart disease, as long as you avoid the manufactured trans-fats found in many processed foods. This suggests that the fat on our bodies can’t blame the fat in our diet.


Source of Information : Oreilly - Your Body Missing Manual

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