Category Archives: Diet

High Protein Diets Are a Great Way to Meet Your New Years Resolution

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With 2011 just around the corner, many people are already making plans to “lose that extra weight” next year. However, many will give up on their resolution because following a diet is often hard and does not show instant results. Others may give up because the diet drains their energy. People wishing to lose weight, especially women, but not wanting to feel drained and lethargic should consider a high protein diet this year.

Isn’t A High Protein Diet All Meat?

A high protein diet does not necessarily mean that all you are going to do is eat meat and nothing else. It means that the bulk of the foods you consume each day will be protein-based. Protein rich foods include meat, many beans and legumes, nuts, peanut butter, eggs and Greek styled yogurt. Proteins are easily converted to energy and do not boost your insulin levels like high carbohydrate foods. This is especially important for women who have a tendency to be insulin resistant.

What Is Insulin Resistance And How Does Protein Help?

Insulin resistance occurs when your body cannot process the complex sugars you eat each day and automatically converts these sugars into fat storage. Protein, however, does not produce insulin, but converts to energy. With your body converting the food you intake into energy instead of fat, you will begin to lose weight. Also, during this process your body will start to recover from the insulin resistance and allow you to process complex carbohydrates better.

What Are Some Popular High Protein Diets On The Market?

The Adkins Diet is perhaps the most famous of these types of diets. However, The Protein Diet, The Flat Belly Diet and The Zone are all types of high protein diets that have been successful for countless people.

Are High Protein Diets Hard To Follow?

Just like any diet, a high protein diet takes some adjustment. If you often eat a doughnut for breakfast, making time to have an egg instead may require some more time on your part. This type of diet is about eating the foods that will cause your body to create energy and burn fat. You will need to get in the habit of eating specific foods by replacing your current choices. If you can make eating protein a habit, the diet will be a success.

Just remember: If you wake up one morning and eat a doughnut, the diet is not ruined. Finish the day eating on the diet and start your next day with the intention of completing the diet for the entire day. Through many failures comes success.

Proven Ways To Use Fast Diet Plans Safely

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So you have decided to lose those unwanted pounds that have been creeping onto your body over the past few years or maybe even months, but you want fast diet plans. Something measured in pounds lost not ounces. Well, hold your horses. I am not going to tell you that can’t lose weight fast or that it shouldn’t be done fast, but I am going to mention a few things you need to be aware of before going on fast diet plans.

Fast Diet Plans Can Mean Equally Fast Weight Gain

If you chose the wrong fast diet plans, which is about 90% of them, and lose the weight fast, you will probably gain it back just as fast or faster once you are done with the diet. A lot of times, fast diet plans fail to provide the body with the nutrition it needs and the body responds by dialing down its metabolism and cannibalizing lean muscle tissue to use as an energy source. Lean muscle tissue helps us burn fat so that is a loss we can ill afford. The loss of lean muscle tissue and a reduced metabolism means our bodies are itching to put back on the pounds once you start eating normally again.

Fast Diet Plans Often Fail To Have An Exit Strategy.

Unless you are losing weight for an acting roll or you just want to look good for your class reunion and you don’t care if you go back to being fat again after the gig, I suggest you ask yourself what you are going to do once you reach your goal. You sure as heck can’t go back to eating the way you did before because that is what got you fat in the first place. Fast diet plans often skip over this important little bit of information and you end up packing the pounds right back on.

Fast Diet Plans Can Be Dangerous

Many fast diet plans rob the body of essential nutrients in their headlong rush to get weight off, but as I have said before not all weight is fat. You can lose weight from loss of lean muscle tissue, not good. You can lose it from water flushing out of your tissues, easy go, easy come. On top of this, you could throw your body’s chemistry off by the lack of essential minerals and nutrients. This could cause irregular heart beats, dizziness, fainting and in extreme cases heart failure. So any fast diet plan had better be a safe one.

Safety Rules For Rapid Weight Loss Programs

As I said at the beginning, I am not going to say that rapid weight loss won’t work or that they can’t be done. They can, but you need to follow these rules:

  • make sure that you are getting all of the minerals and nutrients your body needs to survive.
  • make sure you drink 64 ounces of water day during the diet.
  • don’t stay on fast diet plans for over 3 weeks with out a break.
  • don’t over do exercise when you are an a very limited calorie diet. You must not exercise hard enough to cause an energy deficit greater than your body can metabolize fat to provide for. If you do, your body will switch to using lean muscle tissue to satisfy the deficit. By the way, this is way extreme athletes like those that do triathlons and pentathlons look like walking skeletons. They routinely push their bodies beyond safe limits and their bodies respond by devouring their lean muscle tissue.
  • have an exit strategy, a plan on how you will maintain your weight loss once you are finished with your diet.

If you follow these rules you should be pretty safe using fast diet plans that could have you losing up 10 pounds or more in two weeks. Remember, even though you only want to stay on the rapid weight loss plan for 2 to 3 weeks, that doesn’t mean you can’t repeat this fast fat loss diet after taking a break. In fact, you can repeat it as many times as you want in between breaks.