A Mediterranean Diet - How to Lose Weight Safely

Copyright 2005 Roy Barker

If you are looking for a way to lose fifteen pounds in two weeks, a high protein diet, a low carb diet, a fruit diet, a no fat diet, a blood type diet, a juice fast, a diet named after a place in Miami, a grapefruit diet, a cactus diet, a coffee and cigarette diet, a diet that includes sweets, a diet based on your body type, a diet based on an ancient religion or a diet based on your hair color, then this article is NOT for you.

Fad and crash diets, such as the ones described above are not only unhealthy but they also cause rebound weight gain. Also most diets, even though diet gurus write them, cause an initial weight loss but the ultimate result is that you gain all of the weight back the minute you go off the plan. If you don’t gain it back within a couple of diets, you are likely to gain it all back plus a bit more within a year.

Crash diets dehydrate you, low calorie diets put your body into starvation mode so you plateau so you can’t lose one more pound and high protein diets stress your kidneys and clog your arteries. Read the rest of this entry »

Calorie and Carbohydrate Counters

I recently received an email offer for a hand held computer that contains food fact tables, non volatile memory to hold the user’s input data (food types and amounts, height, frame type) and calculates the total calories or carbohydrates that the dieter might want to track or limit.

Rather clever, and it will probably sell well.

However, if the dieter chooses safe food types, he/she can eat huge amounts without ever counting either calories or carbohydrates, and still lose weight. Of course, limiting consumption to moderate amounts will speed weight loss, and allow stabilizing at one’s ideal weight. Read the rest of this entry »

Ultimate Low Carb Food List

Wouldn’t it be great to have a low carb food list to help you with your low carb diet program?

Whether it’s Atkins, Beach diet, or one of the many other low or no carb diets you are practicing, low carb food lists become necessary to living day-to-day with your diet.

Here are two low carb food lists that may help you achieve your weight loss goals and one low carb list that you can use to limit your carb intake. Read the rest of this entry »

Health News as Source for Laughs

Google News can be entertaining (http://news.google.com/).

Late August 2004 headlines show that at least some USA government experts understand the difference between “good” and “bad” sugars. However, they stopped short of telling us to limit refined sugar intake, in updated dietary guidelines for 2005.

Could this reluctance to state the obvious be signs that commercial interests are taken seriously by the Feds? News articles said that 7 of the 13 panel members have financial interests in the food industry.

Duh! Read the rest of this entry »

Why the HAPPY DIET works

Understanding why and how the happy diet works.

There is a simple explanation and that being is you get to choose what you want to eat. Most diets today prove to be very stressful for many men and women in their quest to lose weight. This is because they are following instructions from others on what they should and should not be eating. How do these people know? What tickles your fancy?

Discover how the happy diet can work for you, what is the happy diet you ask. It is a diet carefully devised by youself with all the things that you like to eat. You get to choose your own meats fresh fruit and vegetables.

Diets definitely work if you adhere to all the rules, break them then no results. Now let us get cracking on a diet that makes sense and guaranteed to put a smile on your face. Read the rest of this entry »

The Low Carb F.A.Q

When most people think of low carb diets they automatically think Atkins. For obvious reasons. Dr. Robert Atkins formulated the original low carb diet in 1972 and was met a with a hail of ridicule and negativity from the medical community at large.

The Atkins Diet, since renamed to the Atkins Nutritional Approach, works on a very simple principle. Carbohydrates are what our body normally use to produce energy. If you restrict the carbohydrate intake of a normal person their metabolism changes. Changes? Yes your body looks to the next available energy source which is… fat. So now instead of burning carbohydrates for energy your body does the same thing with your existing fat deposits.

In a low carbohydrate diet you actually increase your intake of fat and pure protein as opposed to reducing it. In theory the more fat you eat the more fat you burn because your body is now using fat for energy. It’s common to see low carb dieters eating enormous steaks smothered in butter with fried eggs and mushrooms on the side. A very high fat meal but also a perfect low carbohydrate meal. Read the rest of this entry »

Protein: Common or Missing Link?

Most of us equate the word diet with calorie reduction. This is understandable, since most diet marketing is relentlessly focused on offering consumers low-calorie options.

Unfortunately, this way of thinking is categorically wrong. The simple fact that any nutritionist will verify is that everyone is on a diet. Even those who do not wish, or do not need, to lose weight are on a diet, as are those who are increasing their weight. Dieting has nothing to do with calorie reduction, and everything to do with calories choices. The foods you ‘choose’ to eat determine the type of diet you are on.

Indeed, to the digestive system and the intestines, a candy bar and a stalk of celery are neither seen as junk food nor diet food. They are both seen as simply food. The candy bar leads to a rapid glycemic reaction and the production of fat cells. The celery does not. Still, the body does not label one as junk and the other as diet food. In fact, everything that the body ingests, it tries to use in the best way that it can. Read the rest of this entry »

Nutrition Is More Than The Nutrition Facts Box

Most people pay little attention to the nutritional content of their food until they are on, or about to begin a diet.

Then they take a keen interest in seeing which diet has less calories or less carbohydrates. But it is a simple fact that most popular diets do not have nearly as many positive effects as their creators would have us believe.

Most of the serious diets we hear about work by simply removing a food or food group from your daily diet. This sometimes means eating less of certain foods than you normally would, however it often means entirely removing certain food groups from your diet altogether. The basic premise is that by restricting your diet in some way, you will lose weight. Read the rest of this entry »

The Isometric Diet and Balanced Health

The concept isometric has been a part of the health care vocabulary for decades. The most common application of the term, until now, has been with respect to physical exercise. Taken from the Greek root word Iso, meaning equal, the familiar term Isometric exercises involves applying equal weight to achieve strength goals.

Fairly recently, health researchers have discovered another innovative application of the isometric concept in the health care field: nutrition. These researchers have identified that an isometric approach to diet – a.k.a. the “Isometric Diet” — can lead to health improvement.

The Isometric Diet®, which provides the philosophical basis for the Zone Diet, has swiftly gained respect from the health and nutrition community because it applies this clear “balance” lens to the rather confused, often misinformed world of dieting. Created by Dan Duchaine in the mid 90s, and evolved by researchers such as Dr. Barry Sears (founder of the Zone Diet™), the Isometric Diet is an eating regimen that calls for a balanced ratio of protein, low-glycemic carbohydrates, and essential fatty acids. Read the rest of this entry »

Fast And Easy Weight Loss Using Diet Programs And Diet Pills

If you’re one of the approximately 67% of Americans that are wired into the internet, there’s a good chance that sometime in the last 24 hours you’ve received at least one spam email promoting the latest and greatest diet pill or weight loss program. These diet products promise fast weight loss results, often without any effort or exercise. The never-ending promise of a weight loss pill that actually works keeps us hoping for eventual success.

At the same time, we’re continually inundated with news of the most recent diet and how this time it’s really going to work for us. The South Beach Diet, the Zone Diet, the Atkins Diet, the Low Carb Diet, the Cabbage Soup Diet, the Mediterranean Diet, the LA Weight Loss Diet, the Weight Watchers Diet, the Diabetic Diet, the Low Cholesterol Diet, the Prescription Pill Diet, the 3 Day Diet, the Low Fat Diet, the High Protein Diet, the Maker Diet, the Liquid Diet, the Grapefruit Diet, the Fad Diet, the Blood Type Diet, the GI Diet, the Vegetarian Diet, the Vegan Diet, the Detox Diet, the Dash Diet, the Candida Diet, the Gluten Free Diet, the Hollywood Diet, the Negative Calorie Diet, the 1200 Calorie Diet, the Raw Food Diet, the Phentermine Diet, the High Fiber Diet, the Macrobiotic Diet, the Science Diet, the Lemonade Diet, the Scarsdale Diet, the Diverticulitis Diet and the Fat Flush Diet are all examples of diet plans that promise to help us achieve quick weight loss. Read the rest of this entry »