If it is true that you are what you eat, it is time for us all to get a bit more serious about what we consume. The human body was designed to function the same way any machine does, given the right maintenance and fuel. The problem is that in our hurried lives, it is becoming increasingly difficult to put nutritional concerns, above all, the other hundreds that we have daily. If you want to change your diet to either increase your energy, improve your health or to lose weight, your diet plan is going to be the key to your transformation. There are different types of diet plans to adhere to depending on what your goals are. To find out which one best suits your needs you have first to determine what they are, and what it is that you can and cannot live with.
Crash diet and fads all claim to help you lose weight, but even if you can lose weight, if you don’t change your eating habits, the weight is most likely going to return. That is why it is okay to adhere to a specific diet plan, achieve your goals, and then reevaluate, just be sure that you are eating to accomplish what it is that you want.
5 Diet Ideas To Losing Weight
1. The South Beach Diet
The South Beach Diet was designed for people who want to lose weight and to feel good. It isn’t just a weight loss plan; it is a total transformation plan. The key components of the diet are to cut out sugar, trans fat, high fat, and simple carbohydrate foods. Proven as a good diet plan to follow to both lose weight and to maintain a healthy weight for life. Stressing fresh foods and vegetables, staying away from convenience foods that are loaded with salt, preservatives and sugars is essential. What the diet also stresses is upping your intake of protein, but getting your intake from lean meats, poultry, and fish. It also stresses staying away from sports drinks, soft drinks and diet sodas with artificial sweeteners. The South Beach Diet is the perfect diet for those who are looking to improve their health and their physique. The only back draw to this plan is that it is difficult to follow strictly and can seem sacrificing at times.
2. The Atkins Diet
The Atkins Diet is a diet that was designed to undo the carbohydrate craze of the eighties. When doctors were hoping on board of the low-fat bandwagon, the Atkins Diet came along to debunk its benefits. It is a diet that was designed to help people lose weight and to regain health. Introducing fat back into the diet, it is based on a belief that you should cut out all carbohydrates, dairy and sugars from the diet. Starting out you strictly have to eliminate all grains and other carbohydrates, which for some of us can be very challenging. As time goes on, and you achieve your weight loss goals, you can introduce them back in minuscule amounts. A great diet for meat lovers you are allowed to eat all the meat, fish, poultry, fresh fruits and vegetable that you want. Not a diet that involves cutting calories, it is all about what you eat, not how much you eat. The thought process is that by eating foods that create satiation, you don’t feel hungry all the time, and you lose weight.
3. The Paleo Diet
The Paleo Diet is a diet that is quickly gaining in popularity. Following in the footsteps of the Atkins Diet and the South Beach Diet, it takes it one step further. The entire philosophy is to eat as our ancestors did. That means that you only consume those things that are found growing or natural. Cutting out carbohydrates is essential, as is eliminating dairy. The allowed foods are eggs, poultry, fish, meats, fresh fruits, and vegetables. Basically, on this diet, you only eat those things that grow. A simplistic diet to follow, it may be difficult for those who like their pretzels and convenience foods from the frozen isle. A great way to lose weight, it was designed to maintain good health, eliminate disease and restore our bodies to the way that nature wanted them to function.
4. Crash fad diets
There are a myriad of crash foods diets that are almost all the same. They work under the guise that if you cut calories to the point of starvation you will lose weight. Some want you to just eat certain foods, foods in combinations, or foods that are strange, but the basic concept about them all is that they severely limit both calories and your nutritional intake. Some of them do have some merit for the fact that they will help you to lose weight at the start, but as the body starts to read starvation, your metabolism is going to adjust. That will have it slowing down and you unable to lose anymore weight. That is why on crash diets you hit what is called a “plateau” where weight loss is virtually impossible. It is at that point where most give up, start regularly eating again, and gain back all the weight they worked so hard to take off.
5. DASH
The dash diet was designed by cardiovascular specialists to deal with clients with high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. Following along the lines of a low-fat diet, it allows you to eat complex carbohydrates, lean meats and fish, fresh fruits and vegetables, low-fat dairy products and cut the sugar and sodium. The DASH Diet is a great diet to lose weight and to feel healthy.
Diet combined with exercise
When it comes to dieting, the plan that you choose is not the key, it is making the commitment. There was just a landmark study that proved that no matter which diet you choose to partake in, the diet itself did not matter as much as just making the commitment and following through. No matter what diet you choose to adhere to, if you follow it, you are bound to drop the weight and to feel better. The people who lose the most weight on any diet are those who combine it with an exercise plan.