A simple technique for
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A simple technique for
weight control and slow loss.
Even if you're not on a diet - always quit eating at a point where you would like a little more.
Never stuff yourself when eating. Eat slowly so you can feel how full you're getting, and always quit at a point where you would like a little more. When you under eat a little, you cut back on calories, but more importantly you slowly shrink your stomach so that your appetite becomes increasingly easy to satisfy over time. When you overeat, you take in too many calories and you stretch your stomach and put yourself on the path of a ballooning body.
It's convenient to blame everything on genes, and pretend that we're helpless and blameless. But the genetic origin of obesity does raise a few questions. Why weren't large portions of the human population obese all through history, as they are today in the rich countries? When people were crossing the Bering Strait into North America 13,000 years ago, were some of them waddling along, huffing and puffing? If it's all in the genes, do big fat Americans have different fat genes than the typically lean people of poorer nations? Have chubby Chinese-Americans had their genes modified from those of their leaner Asian relatives? Why aren't primitive people still living in stone age societies waddling around with an extra 100 pounds?
Some people may be somewhat more genetically prone to putting weight on than others, but it's facile to blame the obesity plague on anything but misuse of our own free will.
Exercise can help you maintain a healthy weight. If you’re already substantially overweight exercise usually won’t cure the problem, but it can help in a couple ways.
First, you can regularly
burn up a small amount of calories with cardiovascular (CV) exercise, and a
minor amount with weight lifting.
Why is it a "small amount"? It takes a lot of effort to burn up calories. Running
five miles is a hard workout for most
people, yet it burns only about 450 calories. That's equivalent to three
beers, or three non-diet Cokes, or a
large hamburger. If you're tens of pounds overweight, it would take an
extraordinarily hard exercise program to burn off your extra pounds - if you
kept on eating the same as you had been. However, let's not totally dismiss
the role of exercise burning up calories in weight reduction, or weight maintenance.
The weight we slowly put on is the result of an excess of calories
over the long term. Say you burn up 300 calories with your CV exercise
sessions, and 100 calories with your weight lifting. Working out six times a
week, that's 1,200 calories burned every week. Since a pound of human fat
equates to 3,500 calories, you're exercising calories away to the tune of
0.34 pounds per week; 1.5 pounds per month; 18 pounds per year. That's not
"nothin", particularly over a number of years.
Second, exercise can help in weight reduction by raising your blood sugar level, which diminishes hunger. Exercising before a meal will help you comfortably reduce the amount you want to eat.
To lose substantial weight over a period of weeks and months you probably need to do two things:
Change your diet from the standard American fare of excessive fat and over-refined carbohydrates.
Decrease the amounts eaten. If you greatly reduce your caloric intake then here's another reason that physical exercise is important in your weight loss program...
If you make a big cut back in caloric intake, there's an important reason for you to do CV and muscle strengthening workouts. Diets, particularly crash diets, can be destructive. Cut way back on food and you will lose muscle tissue as well as fat. A considerable amount of the weight loss can be muscle, if you are inactive.
A problem with crash diets and fad diets is that they aren't sustainable over the long term, and the weight losses get reversed. This weight regain favors fat, not muscle. A series of diet weight losses followed by re-gaining puts a person on a downward spiral in which they actually increase their percentage of body fat due to muscle tissue loss. For some reason, there is a tendency in many people for the fat lost from the facial area not to be fully replaced upon subsequent weight gain. Have you ever noticed how some people with persistent weight problems have unusually thin faces? It’s due to alternating periods of weight loss and re-gain.
If you are going to lose weight, make it fat, not muscle. To avoid losing muscle - use it in an exercise program. It doesn't have to be rigorous, something moderate will still alert the body that this type of tissue is being used and needs to be sustained.
The main thing in losing weight is to eat fewer calories than you burn.
Let's find out what's needed to lose weight in a fast but sensible manner. First, here's how to make a rough estimate of how many calories you need per day to maintain your present weight.
If you are physically inactive: Your weight x 10 = estimated calories / day.
If you are moderately physically active: Your weight x 11 = estimated calories / day.
If you are highly physically active: Your weight x 12 = estimated calories / day.
For someone who weighs 200 pounds and is moderately active:
About (200 x 11 = ) 2200 calories per day to maintain that weight.
(Here's a chart showing calorie needs versus weight.)
This is a rough estimate method. Actual weight maintenance calorie levels tend to change with age and vary among individuals. A more accurate method, if your weight has been steady, is to write down everything you eat for a week, and determine the calories (some food calorie data sources are given below).
If you want to lose weight, here's how to determine how many calories to cut back on daily.
If you lose 1 percent of your body weight per week, you will lose 12 percent of your starting weight in 3 months; 23 percent in 6 months; 40 percent in one year. Those are major reductions at a rate which would not threaten the health of most individuals.
A good procedure for someone wanting to lose weight, is simply to calculate what 1 percent of their weight is, and multiply that times 3500 calories per pound, to see what number of calories need to be cut back on per week to lose 1 percent body weight per week (assuming your weight is currently stable). Divide that by 7 to get the daily calorie cutback needed.
To continue the example: weight = 200
1 percent of 200 = 2 pounds
2 pounds X 3500 calories per pound = 7000 calories cutback per week
7000 / 7 = 1000 calories cutback per day
(Here's a chart showing calorie reduction versus current body weight for a 1% weekly weight loss.)
If a moderately active person's weight has been holding steady at 200 (not gaining or losing) a good strong weight reduction program of 1 percent per week would involve cutting back their calories by about 45 percent (1000 / 2200).
A 45 percent reduction in calories eaten is certainly noticeable and will take some adjustments and discipline - but it's not some tortuous ordeal involving starvation. Anybody with desire, some knowledge and discipline can do it.
At this point, we've estimated what's involved in a 1 percent per week weight loss program. If you're moderately active and your weight is stable you need to cut back your calories by about 45 percent. If you're already losing weight, it would be somewhat less than that; if you're currently gaining weight it would have to be more to get to around that 1 percent per week rate of weight loss.
To expand the example from the info on this chart, if you're not physically active, then your caloric cutback to be at a 1 percent per week reduction rate rises to 50 percent (1000 / 2000). If you are very active, it falls to 41 percent (1000 / 2400).
These are substantial reductions - they essentially amount to eating 1/2 of what you have been. If you can't do it, scale back to some level of reduction that you can handle.
Another approach is to decide how much weight you want to lose and how long you're willing to take. Say you want to lose 20 pounds in 3 months.
20 pds * 3500 cals/pd = 70,000 calories to eliminate from your diet.
70,000 cals / 90 days = 778 calories per day below your weight maintenance.
778/2200
= 35 percent calorie reduction.
Next, what about all these weight loss diets - do any of them make sense or have any real value in reducing caloric intake?
First of all, do you even need to worry about "diets" and dieting, or do you need to simply stop buying and eating junk food? Junk food, and to a lesser degree, fast food and restaurant food in general, are designed to taste good - NOT to be good food.
If something doesn't taste as good as competing products, sales suffer, profits don't come in and the junk food / fast food / restaurant disappears from the market. So, how do they make something taste extra good?
Fat and sugar make stuff taste good. Fat is a particular problem in that per volume eaten, it delivers 2.25 times as many calories as the other two nutrient types (carbohydrates and protein). Wild animal meat is mostly protein, but the meat commonly sold in the US is specially raised so that more fat is present within the meat than would naturally occur. Why? Because it makes it taste better and easier to cook. By the way, the various types of sausage are commonly 80 to 90 percent fat.
Natural foods mostly don't have a lot of calories per volume, and they can fill up your stomach while supplying a relatively low number of them. Many wild game meats, fruits, grains and vegetables are like that. It's only in recent decades that foods "manufactured" to hook people on their taste came into being. And they almost always depend on fat and sugar versus sophisticated use of spices etc.
To continue the point about junk / fast / restaurant foods, here's some examples of junk foods put in terms of a 150 pound person, who is moderately active. Somebody like this needs about 1650 calories daily to neither gain nor lose weight.
One king size Snickers candy bar has 541 calories. That's 33 percent of the person's daily calorie needs, in one candy bar.
Potato / tortilla chips typically have 500 or 600 calories per quarter pound - about 33 percent of the person's daily calorie needs.
A typical hamburger has 400 to 500 calories - about 27 percent of the person's daily calorie needs.
A medium order of french fries has about 400 calories - about 24 percent of the person's daily calorie needs.
One small 12 ounce can of non-diet soda has about 150 calories. Drinking 3 during a day equals 450 calories -27 percent of the person's daily calorie needs.
A quarter pound of typical sausage has about 350 calories (that's the sausage itself, not a complete sandwich) - 21 percent of the person's daily calorie needs.
One small packaged burrito can have 400 calories - 24 percent of the person's daily calorie needs.
One regular size donut can have 200 calories - 12 percent of the person's daily calorie needs.
Nuts are not exactly junk food - but they are a high calorie item. One cup of mixed nuts has about 880 calories - 53 percent of the person's daily calorie needs.
One tablespoon of peanut butter has about 90 calories. Using 4 tablespoons to make a peanut butter sandwich, the whole thing is about 560 calories - 34 percent of the person's daily calorie needs.
It's possible that if your eating habits are otherwise reasonable, all you need to do to put yourself on a good weight loss path is to stop eating things like donuts, candy bars and fast food hamburgers and fries etc. A good dietary first step for many people is simply to stop drinking regular soft drinks and switch to the diet version.
Try doing this. Carry a pen and a piece of paper and for a week, note everything you eat that falls into the junk / fast / restaurant foods category. Note the number of calories from packaging or from what ever source is available. Here's a couple links to good sources for calorie content of foods:
http://www.hoptechno.com/nightcrew/sante7000/sante7000_search.cfm
http://www.doithome.com/food_search.asp
Then compare the junk you eat to the amount of calorie reduction you need to put you on a 1 percent per week weight loss path. Some of the "junk" food stuff can just be eliminated. Some might have to be replaced with better food - food that satisfies your hunger with fewer calories. Maybe some whole wheat bread that you can take with you where you work etc. By this step alone, some people with a weight problem can start reducing without making any major changes in their regular meals.
Here's some examples of low calorie density foods that can be used to replace junk / fast / restaurant foods. These types of food can satisfy your hunger by the volume involved, with fewer calories.
Many people will still need to reduce their calories after they eliminate junk food. A simple way to do that is to continue eating the same foods that you have been, but in smaller quantities.
Determine how many calories you have cut out of by eliminating junk food.
Add back the calories from any substitutes you may be giving yourself to replace the junk.
Subtract the net calorie reduction from the total amount of calories you need to reduce to get onto a 1 percent per week weight reduction plan.
Cut back the quantities you normally eat at mealtimes by the resulting amount from step 3.
Maybe your "regular" meals need some adjustment in their composition, even if you have cut them back in size. There are many "diets" floating around. Some of them almost become religious dogmas, with extremist devotees serving as a sort of "priesthood". Some of these diet programs can just be frustrating in their failure to deliver sustainable results - others can be dangerous to your health.
Some of these "miracle" weight cures are making various people a lot of money - what looks like advice might actually be a sales pitch by people who couldn't care less about your welfare.
The first thing to remember is that the biggest factor bearing on weight in any diet is the number of calories eaten. Some "miracle" diets that restrict the types of foods that may be eaten also lay out quantities that are so low in calories that anybody would lose weight - irregardless of the specific foods they were eating.
Before discussing various types of diets, lets take a look at...
What does human physiology indicate about diet?
We're omnivores (plant and meat eaters) now, but did we evolve that way? Are our internal organs, enzymes, biochemistry, etc. set up for what we eat? Cows are herbivores, but rendered meat (including beef) has become a regular food additive in recent years in cattle feed lots because it makes them grow faster. However, it also makes them subject to contracting diseases that cattle evolution never developed defenses against. Likewise, carnivores can eat and digest plant material. What does human physiology indicate about the food types that we evolved with?
A number of factors indicate we evolved primarily as plant eaters. Outwardly, we don't have the limbs, claws, carnivore type jaws or teeth of animals that chase and take down prey and rip it apart. We have 32 teeth, but only the 4 canines are somewhat oriented toward meat eating.
Our intestines are 3 or 4 times longer than they should be if we evolved primarily as meat eaters. Our stomach acid is much weaker than carnivores, at about the same pH as that of plant eating animals. We have a plant digestive enzyme in our mouths not found in carnivores.
Our limbs with our free hands are set up for gathering food - plants and bugs. They're also good for using weapons to take down game - but that's not likely a product of evolution. Humanoid bodies were pretty well defined before humans got good enough brains to become superbly lethal at using weapons and teamwork in hunts.
While there are many physiological factors pointing to us evolving primarily as plant eaters, there is no question that man has also been an avid meat eater for at least tens of thousands of years. In fact, the timing and areal patterns of the extinction of many large animal species coincides with homo sapiens first showing up in those areas. Eating animal protein had major advantages to humans. It's high calorie and allowed diversification of food sources - diversification is a good survival strategy.
The reason we eat so much meat nowadays is due more to wealth and advertising than it is to any health or survival advantages. Some of the things that make up a large part of our diet, cereal grains for instance, only became prominent in human diets over the last 10,000 years. It was at that time the last ice age ended, and a warmer more stable climate occurred over large areas. This in turn facilitated the large scale onset of agriculture, versus just hunting and gathering.
Homo Sapiens evolved from a sequence of hominids who primarily ate plants and in some cases, a lot of meat. Our physiology and biochemistry is largely inherited from them. Our species has been around for the last 150 to 200 thousand years. During the last 10,000 years of that, a huge change occurred in how the species lives and eats.
Some of the diet plans showing up nowadays are based on the idea that food types that only became available in the last 10,000 years (since the onset of agriculture), should be avoided. The thought is that humans didn't evolve with these foods and they can have all sorts of negative effects on us that lead to things like heart disease, cancer, diabetes etc.
A slight problem with man going back to his REAL paleo diet might be selling people on eating not just certain types of fruits and vegetables, but also bugs, worms, raw carrion meat that has been out in the sun a couple days and raw marrow from bones. Humans didn't evolve with supermarkets and microwave ovens. They evolved as gatherers and scavengers, and then perhaps later on as hunter / gatherer / scavengers.
I think the paleo diet idea has a lot of value in indicating that humans are in deed asking for trouble when they feed on things that wind up supplying nutrients that sharply differ in kind and quantity from what we evolved with. However, nobody is going to go back to a real paleo diet unless they're lost in the wilderness and eating for survival whatever is available - with or without the nicety of a cook fire.
People with persistent health problems and allergies associated with food might benefit from shifting away from foods that man has acquired during the agricultural age of the last 10,000 years.
Here's a summary of non-bug foods that are generally consistent with a "paleo diet". The basic idea is to only eat foods the same or similar to what was available to man before the agricultural age. Cooking methods should cook fat OUT of food, not into it as does frying.
Vegetables.
Fruits.
Seeds (not processed).
Nuts (in the shell, not processed).
Lean red meat, fish, fowl.
Here's a summary of foods that are NOT consistent with a "paleo diet".
Dairy products, including milk, butter, cheese.
Cereal grains including things like bread, rice, corn.
Beans, peas or other legumes.
Potatoes.
Packaged "manufactured" foods.
Sweets, candy or soda, nothing with refined sugar.
Alcohol.
You can see from this list of "non-paleo" foods that following this diet would involve a major food change for almost anyone. If someone wanted to further replicate early mans' diet, then some other eating changes would be in order. Occasional fasting would replicate spells when no food was available. Intermittent periods of feeding on only one food type would simulate periods of limited food availability. The body no doubt evolved means of dealing with episodes like these, and they might have beneficial side effects that have gone unrecognized.
General types of diets
When you get down to their basics, many diets focus on the types of nutrients (carbohydrates, protein, fat) that people should be eating or not eating for health and weight control. Some advocate keeping fat at a minimum, others are based on eating all of it you want, but no carbohydrates
Let's discuss each nutrient type individually. Instead of dictating some cure-all diet, you'll find a number of links to lists. These you can use to see how hundreds of foods rank in various nutritional parameters. This will put you in a position to determine things to add or subtract from your current diet for weight control and health.
There are good and bad carbohydrates.
Bad carbohydrates cause a large rapid rise in blood sugar level, and are said to have a high "glycemic index". This rise in blood sugar triggers the release of insulin in most people. Over time, excessive insulin secretions can lead to insulin resistance and the possible loss of the pancreas's ability to secrete it - which is the disease known as diabetes.
Another negative factor of foods with high glycemic loads is the creation of appetite. A few hours after its consumption, a sensation of hunger is typically created, making the person want to eat more (junk food). This is caused by a cycle in which high glycemic food quickly dumps sugar into the blood, followed by the body's response of putting insulin into the blood, which causes blood sugar to drop, which in turn creates a sensation of hunger.
Eating a lot of high glycemic carbohydrate foods has been associated with a number of diseases:
Obesity
Adult onset diabetes
High blood pressure
Heart disease
Here's a list of about 100 carbohydrate foods going from lowest to highest in glycemic index. Notice that the higher the glycemic index, the more likely the food is processed or refined, versus being natural. Baked potatoes are an exception to that - having a very high glycemic index.
A high carbohydrate diet oriented toward high glycemic foods increases the probability of getting health problems of the types listed just above. The person will probably be eating a lot of manufactured junk and processed fast food and experiencing jolts created by swings in their blood sugar. These sugar jolts can affect the emotional stability of some individuals, especially children.
Nowadays, added sugar constitutes 15 to 20 percent of the average American’s caloric intake. If you create in your mind a graph showing sugar consumption since man's beginning until now, the line for sugar would trail along at the bottom of the graph until it approaches recent years - at which point it would leap up nearly vertically. Consistent with this, archaeological examinations of human remains show a rapid decline in human dental health coincident with the onset of added sugar consumption.
Added sugar foods are generally high calorie density. That means for a given the volume eaten, they contribute an elevated number of calories for the body to burn instead of using fat, protein or other types of carbohydrates. That means high sugar consumption promotes excessive weight gain.
Elevated sugar consumption is associated with increased levels of triglycerides and insulin in the blood. High triglycerides raise the risk of heart disease and stroke by facilitating arterial plaque deposition, which clogs them. High insulin is thought to be associated with a tendency for the body to store fat instead of burning it, thus further promoting obesity.
Good carbohydrates
cause a low slow rise in blood sugar level, and are said to have a low
glycemic index. Some general examples of such foods are: most fruits and
vegetables; basic breakfast cereals based
on bran, oats and barley without sugar; and whole seed grainy breads.
Carbohydrates come from plants and most of the plants available to man during
his evolution were low to moderate on the glycemic scale. Carbohydrates
generally serve the role
of quick energy. They can be broken down relatively easily, transformed into
sugar and sent into the bloodstream to re-supply cell tissue. Good carbos do it
at a level and rate consistent with how humans evolved and consistent with
maintaining health.
Here's a list of over 900 foods, sorted from highest in carbohydrate calories to lowest. There's no info regarding glycemic index in this database. The list shows total calories, and percent calories from protein, carbohydrates, and fat. Also shown are grams of fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium. (Depending on your connection speed, this page might take a minute to download.)
The dietary bottom line for the carbohydrates in your diet is to avoid those with high glycemic indexes, and to avoid foods with added sugars. This last category includes things like candy bars, donuts, cake, sugar soft drinks and milk shakes.
Protein comes from both plant and animal food sources, like meat, fish, fowl, eggs, milk, legumes and grains. Unlike that from plants, animal protein contains all nine essential amino acids that can not be synthesized in the human body. In the case of plants, for example, grains lack lysine and legumes lack methionine. Vegetarians need various protein food sources that taken together, will furnish the needed amino acids.
The average person needs about 1.45 protein calories of food per pound of weight. If someone weighs 150 pounds, they would need about 218 calories daily of protein. That works out to roughly 13 percent of their total daily caloric intake.
People sometimes think they need added protein if they are working out with weights to allow for muscle growth. If you eat anything like an average American diet, you get plenty of protein and don't need to augment it. The exception might be for people engaged in endurance training, which can create a need for increasing protein intake - raising the need up to about 17 percent of total daily caloric intake.
Protein can't be stored in the body and the excess intake is eliminated in urine and feces. It's possible to eat too much protein. Past about 3.63 calories protein per pound of body weight (or about 33 percent of total daily caloric intake) additional protein can put some stress on the kidneys.
High doses of protein whether from food or supplements can result in elevated levels of uric acid in the blood. This can crystallize out in the joints most distant from the heart where blood pressure is lowest, causing a painful condition called gout. Once a joint has been gout afflicted, it can easily be treated, but will be more prone to arthritis in the future.
Their are claims that protein has some advantages in weight control. Apparently it tends to increase the metabolic rate and leads to burning more calories than does an equal caloric amount of fat or carbohydrate. Digestion of protein is supposed to consume more calories than the other two nutrient types. Also, some people find that it satiates the appetite better than fat or carbohydrates.
Here's a list of over 900 foods, sorted from highest in protein calories to lowest. The database shows total calories, and percent calories from protein, carbohydrates, and fat. Also shown are grams of fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium. (Depending on your connection, this page might take a minute to download.)
How much fat is ok? There's no hard evidence as to what level is too much or too little. The American Diabetes Association and the American Heart Association do recommend that no more than 30 percent of your calories come from fat.
Here's a list of over 900 foods, sorted from lowest in fat calories to highest. The database shows total calories, and percent calories from protein, carbohydrates, and fat. Also shown are grams of fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium. (Depending on your connection, this page might take a minute to download.)
There's good fat and bad fat, but all fat is over twice as calorie dense as equal volumes of protein and carbohydrate. Fat makes food taste better and American food, particularly junk, fast and restaurant food, usually has too much of it.
The bad fat we take in does more than just make us overweight. It causes the formation of LDL cholesterol in our blood. This type of cholesterol leads to the coating of the interior of our blood vessels with a constricting plaque that can lead to heart attacks, strokes and male impotence.
The foods that are a problem in creating elevated blood LDL cholesterol contain things that you should get in the habit of looking for on food labels, and then avoiding or minimizing in your diet. These are...Typical foods with excesses of these things are junk / fast / restaurant foods, fatty meats, sausage, hamburgers, french fries, potato and corn chips, bakery items like donuts and cakes, most cooking oils, butter, most margarines, whole milk, cheese, cream and eggs.
Realistically, you can't totally eliminate bad fats in a normal diet. Some ways to minimize them are...
Make a habit of looking at the labels on food and meat packing - before long you'll be well aware of what's low, medium or high on the bad fat front.
Here's a list of over 900 foods, sorted from highest in saturated fat calories as a percent of total calories, to lowest. (Depending on your connection, this page might take a minute to download.)
And since we're on the subject of things that plug up your arteries - here's a list of over 900 foods, sorted from highest ratio of milligrams dietary cholesterol to total calories, to lowest. It's best to minimize dietary cholesterol. (Depending on your connection, this page might take a minute to download.)
Good fats raise HDL cholesterol and lower LDL in the blood. HDL cholesterol not only inhibits new arterial plaque deposition, but may also help remove existing plaque.
You should get in the habit of selecting foods that are high in the following types of fats...
Some examples of good fat foods are: fish; olives; cashews, almonds, peanuts, and most other nuts; flaxseed, olive and canola oils. There's a margarine commonly available in stores that is designed to provide good fats (it tastes fine). There are oil capsule food supplements available that supply balances of types of fats aimed at improving the HDL / LDL balance in the blood stream.
Carbohydrates, proteins and fat in your diet.
The basics of what makes up a sensible diet are pretty obvious. Humans need carbohydrates, but not the high glycemic index ones. Fats are also necessary, but we should minimize the bad ones. We need protein and can get it from plants, animals or both.
Protein: 13 to 25 percent of total calories.
Fat: 15 to 30 percent of total calories.
Carbohydrates: the remainder of food intake.
The best foods? Vegetables, fruits, poultry, fish and lean red meat, preferably cooked in a way that drives animal fats out. Think in terms of foods similar to what pre-agricultural man could have obtained. Next best are "agricultural" age foods like cereals, legumes etc. Absolute worst - junk / fast / restaurant food.
Want to lose weight? Reduce your calories eaten by 30 to 50 percent from what you need to maintain your current weight. Don't eat junk / fast / restaurant food, eat normal balanced meals that are reduced in size.
Everybody is different. Experiment a little and see if eating a little more meat protein works for you to satisfy your hunger. Or maybe your body just works better without meat of any kind. Some people find a small dab of margarine in something like rice can have a big effect in satiating appetite. Find some vegetables that you particularly like and use them to substitute for junk. See what works for you.
The Atkins diet (low carbo, high fat and protein)
This is a very low carbohydrate diet that lets the dieter eat lots of protein and fat.
When carbohydrates are lacking in the diet, the liver converts fats into a type of sugar called glucose. This creates a state called "ketosis" in the body which has a side effect of suppressing appetite. Toxins created by burning fat without carbohydrates can sometimes create fatigue and nausea. The long term effects of this kind of diet are not known.
Does the diet work? Recent studies indicate that it does. Does it work better than a diet with a normal balance of carbohydrates? Again, recent studies suggest it works better for about 6 months, then starts losing effectiveness, allowing more conventional diets to catch up to it in weight loss by the end of a year of dieting.
Bottom line, this is an un-natural way to lose weight. The human body didn't evolve to handle this kind of low carbohydrate input. Most people can't stick with this diet anymore than they can with other fluky programs. And when someone goes off this diet, and returns to their prior eating habits, guess what happens? They gain weight again.
Any diet you can't maintain over your lifetime, is a loser. It's a waste of time.
Big doses of vitamins are a waste of money for most people. In some cases vitamin overdoses can result in medical problems. Vitamins are substances that are used in cellular biochemical processes. The types and amounts necessary for human health have been known for a long time because medical researchers have had access to people who have had to survive for years solely on intravenous feeding. These people served as highly controlled test subjects for determining what’s necessary to maintain human nutritional health. Just the average multivitamin pills available in all supermarkets are more than sufficient for most people.
Green tea is a good addition to most people's diet. Black tea is a fermented variety derived from the same plant as green tea, but with reduced quantities of the desired chemicals.
Since the early 1990’s, there has been an increasing medical research indicating that green tea (botanic name: camillia sinensis) has the ability to lower the chance of contracting cancer and may even be able to inhibit existing tumor growth. It contains an organic chemical (acronymed EGCG) which apparently can protect cellular DNA many times more effectively than the commonly hyped antioxidant vitamins. Green tea also contains substances which combat cholesterol and the clogging of arteries. It’s best not to mix tea with milk as this may chemically interfere with the desired biochemical processes.
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