Archive for November, 2009

Evaluating and Choosing the Best Diet Plans

Monday, November 30th, 2009

There are so many diet plans available today that it could make your head spin trying to figure out which are the best diet plans to follow. Diet plans that promise quick weight loss or require you to avoid certain foods should be avoided like the plague.

When evaluating and choosing the best diet plans, look for those plans that include these four elements:

1. Avoiding food cravings
2. Avoiding hunger
3. Increased activity level
4. A plan you can live with for a lifetime – not just a few weeks

Avoid Food Cravings
Any diet plan that requires you to avoid certain foods will ultimately lead to food cravings and will be unsustainable in the long run. A craving is when you desire a certain food even when you’re not hungry. When you finally cave into this desire you will likely overeat, and consequently pack on more weight.

Cravings are caused by your body’s needs for the six essential food ingredients: carbohydrates, fat, protein, vitamins, minerals, and water. When a diet plan requires you to strictly avoid one of these ingredients, your cravings will only increase because you’re denying your body something it wants. The best diet plans will not only give you the flexibility to include all six ingredients in your diet, they’ll require it.

Avoid Hunger

Hunger is different than cravings in that your body desires not just one of the six ingredients, but all of them at the same time. In other words, it just wants food – any food! If a diet plan causes you to be hungry all the time, you will inevitably overeat. To avoid this, the best diet plans will help you curb your appetite.

The best way to curb your appetite and avoid hunger is to keep your stomach full. The best diet plans will encourage you to eat 5-6 smaller meals throughout the day instead of 3 larger meals. Those meals should consist of fruits and vegetables, which have fiber, along with foods with protein and good fats. Each meal should be well-balanced and include as many of the six ingredients as possible.

Protein and fats are especially effective in suppressing appetite. The best diet plans will not require you to avoid fats. All fats are not the same. There are good and bad fats, and it’s the good fats that your body needs. The good fats are monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. Keep your intake of saturated fats to a minimum.

Increase Activity Level
You need to exercise to lose weight. When you exercise, you increase your metabolic rate, which is the rate at which you burn calories. You cannot achieve long term weight loss success without exercise. Any diet plan that claims you can lose weight simply by changing your diet alone or popping a weight loss pill should be avoided at all costs. The best diet plans will stress the importance of diet AND exercise. You need them both for sustained, long term weight loss.

A Plan You Can Live With For a Lifetime
This is probably the most overlooked element by dieters as they look for the best diet plans, yet it is one of the most important elements. If you cannot live with a diet for life, you simply will not be able to keep the weight off over the long term. It’s that simple. Talk to any elderly person who has managed to stay fit all their life and ask them what kind of diet they’ve had over their lifetime. You can bet they will not say Atkins, Negative-Calorie, or some other short-term fad diet.

The best diet plans will encourage a balanced diet that includes all the six ingredients. You’ve heard of the phrase, “all things in moderation,” and it especially holds true when it comes to a life-long diet. Those fad diets will work in the short term, but if your goal is to keep the weight off for good, then avoid them all together.

Atkins Diet Plan – A Diet Plan With Lowest Carbohydrate Intake

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Searching for a low-carbohydrate diet? Refined carbohydrates are the main cause of obesity, so Atkins developed a diet plan that helps you to loose weight. Sugar, flour, and high fructose corn syrup and saturated fats are the main causes. Atkins diet plan suggest a way to deal with obesity.

According to Atkins diet plan, carbohydrates are restricted in an attempt to control your bodys way of metabolizing foods. This diet plan is mainly based on the fact that, instead of burning glucose, it allows your body to burn fat.

Atkins diet plan is mainly based on consuming high levels of protein and low levels of carbohydrates. It has become a popular weight loss approach for most of us.

Atkins diet plan consists of four phases. They include:

Induction phase

Ongoing weight loss phase

Pre-maintenance phase

Lifetime maintenance phase

Induction phase:

This is the first phase of Atkins diet plan. During this phase, you are allowed to take only 20 grams of carbohydrates per day. You have to avoid caffeine and alcohol completely. Due to this, your body is in the state of ketosis. Ketosis is a phase in which your body burns fats as fuel but not glucose.

During this phase of Atkins diet plan you will lose most weight. Nearly you will lose 6-8 pounds for every week when you are in this phase.

Ongoing weight loss phase:

The objective of this phase is to slowly introduce carbohydrates back into your diet, but you are not allowed to consume a greater amount. You can increase the intake of carbohydrates up to 5 grams.

In this phase of Atkins diet plan, you need to find the critical carbohydrate level that your body requires in order to continue losing weight. The correct level will allow you to eat carbohydrates that wont affect your weight. This phase continues until you will come within 10 pounds of what you want to weigh.

Pre-maintenance phase:

In this phase you are allowed to eat 10 grams of carbohydrates in your diet per week schedule. The main goal of this Atkins diet plan is also to find the critical carbohydrate level in order to keep your weight where you want it.

In this phase of Atkins diet plan, you will lose weight slowly and you will be able to test certain foods to observe if you can safely add them to your diet without weight gain. Once you achieve your goal weight, you will enter into the maintenance phase of Atkins diet plan.

Life maintenance phase:

In this phase you need to add some more carbohydrates into your diet, but not bad ones. This phase helps you continue to follow the eating habits that you picked up during this diet. You will be suggested to choose healthy carbs instead of bad ones such as whole wheat bread.

Once you get into this phase and start to gain weight then you need to go back to an earlier stage and start again from there.

The problems and consequences of Atkins diet plan:

You will lose weight very quickly if you follow the Atkins diet plan.

You wont feel hungry because your body produces ketones, which act as an appetite suppressant.

Atkins diet plan has some disagreeable physical side effects. Sometimes you may feel tired, constipated, have bad breath and lack of energy.

Before following Atkins diet plan, it is better to do your own research, because there are problems and consequences for every diet. It is best to visit your doctor to make a decision about which diet best suits for your condition.

Healthy Weight Loss Diet Plan – 3 Tips To Help You Create A Plan That You Can Stick With

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

Are you not sure how to create a healthy weight loss diet plan? There are so many diets available that it can become difficult to stay focused on a weight loss diet plan that you can stick too. That is because most diets dont fit our individual needs. For example, many people dont want to lose weight by eliminating entire food groups such as a no carbohydrate diet. Its just not convenient.

If you are looking to find a healthy weight loss diet plan that fits your needs here are some tips to get you started.

Learn the basics of eating right

In order to create a diet plan, you need to learn the basics of eating right. Research what foods are good for you and uncover foods you need to avoid most of the time. A good place to check is your local book store.

While there are many books out there that will help you. I suggest a book that is straight forward and doesnt provide fancy gimmicks. Your source should be very fundamental and provide plenty of information on eating right. It should be a resource you can refer too while you are refining and perfecting your own diet plan.

Another place to look is the internet. You can find a lot of great information about proper nutrition from many sources. Also, you can find up to date information and keep your diet plan fresh by trying new things out. Remember, creating a healthy weight loss diet plan that fits your needs is all about researching what will work for you.

Set the standards of your diet

There is no one size fits all solution when it comes to a healthy weight loss diet plan. We all have unique tastes, lifestyles and cultural values. Embrace that and write down all the foods that you like.

During your research on eating right you will learn which foods are optimal for you and which foods are bad. Proper nutrition is a complex subject. Keep a list of these foods so you have a constitution to your program.

Another important standard is that your weight loss diet plan should fit your lifestyle, not the other way around. Healthy diet plans that fit your life style are much easier and more compelling to follow and stay with. For example, if youre a parent your food choices should not be abstract of what the rest of your family eats. In other words, your meals should be the same as what your family eats.

Create a plan each week

Planning is the key to success or failure with maintaining your diet. First, your plan should consist of your short term goals. For example, I will lose 2 lbs is a goal. Use your plan to think through trouble spots for the week.

Some examples of common trouble spots are, nights when you eat out, school functions, working late, little league games, days that require a lot of driving and ordering out at the office. Your daily menu of all meals should be included with your plan and approximate times that you will be eating. You should also set up a meal or two as cheat meals.

With a little research and planning you can create a healthy weight loss diet plan. You just need to learn about feeding your body correctly and identify what will be a fit for you. Once you are up and running with your own plan, then youll be able to be more consistent at staying with your diet.

Quick Weight Loss Diet Plan – Fast Weight Loss Diet Plan

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Quick weight loss diet plan? Does it exist? There are weight loss ways whereby you can loss weight fast, A good example is by doing surgery to reduce your body weight but at the same time it is expensive and extremely dangerous. Another weight loss method that is risky is by taking pills in order to lose weight. Pills are amongst the most risky and unhealthy ways to lose weight. Is there any fast weight loss diet plan out there that is healthy? Please keep reading to find out.

A quick weight loss diet plan that is healthy must have the following. It must provide you with a balanced diet and also it must not starve you. Beware weight loss dieters. There are many weight loss companies that will recommend methods to help you lose weight and you can’t cope with.Some of these methods includes starving yourself in order to lose weight or eating low carbs. A good example is eating salads all week in order to lose weight. Just make sure that any weight loss diet plan you get into gives you these 2 things: A balanced diet and No starvation method in order to lose weight.

A fast weight loss diet plan that lets you eat enough food and doesn’t starve you does exist. While many of the online weight loss diet plans do claim that they don’t use starvation methods in order to lose weight, they actually do and you need to make sure you don’t dive into any of them. Some diet plans are hard to follow and to stick to. They can drain your body energy until you give up on them. Examples are low carb diets (helps you lose a few pounds and your body will gain them back in the long run), Low fat diet (low fat diets don’t work) and other low calorie diets. The quick weight loss diet plan that I am about to reveal to you is not a low carb diet or does not use any starvation methods in order to lose weight. You can actually eat enough food while your body burns calories because the diet itself affects metabolism in a way that you will start burning more calories and lose a few pounds fast every week

Fast weight loss diet plan I recommend used a method called Calorie Shifting to keep your metabolism high all the time. Calorie shifting is the alternate the foods/meals you eat in a way that makes your body’s metabolism stay high all the time. The end result is losing body fat fast. You can actually lose weight fast by applying the Calorie shifting method and other healthy dieting techniques like eating multiple times a day to lose body weight fast. Who wouldn’t want to eat enough until they are satisfied and alternate their meals in a way that they can burn more calories fast and lose weight? Anyone and this is one of the reasons this quick weight loss diet plan I am about to recommend is very easy to follow and stick with.

You don’t need to count calories and starve yourself in order to lose weight, You don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars in order to lose weight,You don’t have to take weight loss pills in order to lose weight and you don’t have to eat only snacks in order to achieve weight loss. What you need is eating healthy delicious foods that provide you enough balanced diet as a way to lose weight and maintain. Your weight loss should be long term because it will be time and money wasted to lose body weight and gain it back all together.Check out my link below for a quick weight loss diet plan.