Healthy eating and weight loss are topics covered in basically every health magazine each month, television shows and self-help seminars. It’s certainly something people continue to struggle with. There are many ways to tackle these problems and get healthy, from new diets or exercise methods, or even proven weight loss aids like the HCG diet. However, people rarely are able to achieve long term success. This stems from fundamental problems in a person’s expectations for weight loss, and also their motivations. Many people, once they reach their goals, will go right back to their old habits. Addressing this is of paramount importance if people will ever succeed losing weight. Few doctors really recommend foods that are high in fat and high in fiber, but recent research has shown them to be particularly useful. Healthy fats are not your enemy, if taken in moderation, such as fish oil or flax seed oil. The worst thing isn’t fat, it’s carbohydrates, which are converted into sugars in your body and cause you to feel lethargic and carry with them the risk of diabetes and other chronic conditions. There is a movement to switch over to what’s called the Mediterranean diet, which is somewhat similar to the “caveman” diet (sometimes called the Paleo diet). This removes all of the high-carb, white flour and processed foods from the person’s diet and has proven to be highly successful in weight loss studies.
If you employ this “Paleo” diet, about 40 or 50 percent of your daily caloric intake will come from high-fiber carbohydrates, and 20 to 25 percent from proteins. The other 30 to 35 percent will come from healthy fats. This is the diet our ancestors used to eat, and what we evolved to be especially capable in processing efficiently. This includes foods like fish, fruits, vegetables, grains, beans, healthy oils (olive for example). You not only get more fiber into your diet, but you are a lot healthier at the end of the day through cutting out these processed carbs. Reserach has shown a reduction by 29% in the risk of heart disease for every 10grams of fiber you have per day. This also lowers your cholesterol as well.
Reduce Your Risk of Diabetes
A majority benefit of the Mediterranean diet or the Paleo diet is the ability it has to offset a person’s insulin resistance, and can actually prevent diabetes. A person can develop diabetes through weight gain as well as excess sugar within your diet. However, if you cut out many of these foods not only will you lose weight but you will also achieve fantastic health benefits as well. These diets can even cut a person’s risks of heart disease, stroke or kidney failure. By eating healthy fats, proteins and fewer calories each day a person builds up their pancreatic health which helps them avoid many of these bad symptoms that often accompany diabetes. There’s even many studies that indicates a person’s risk of developing this disease later in life drops considerably if a person is on such a diet regimen. If you have high levels of blood sugar a lot, even if you’re not diabetic, your body responds by making excessive amounts of insulin. This has many negative long term results, such as sclerosis of the arteries in many patients.
Many people have bought into the whole low-fat, low calorie diets. However, though these do work, many people cannot sustain them for long. A good way to maintain weight loss once you’ve lost it is to switch over to a diet that’s proven to work like the Paleo diet. This method has proven itself in many studies as both a powerful and particularly effective diet program. In addition to this, however, if you do choose a proven method like the HCG diet and achieve great results, you need something to sustain you afterwards. Not only is this kind of diet fairly straightforward (cut out processed, starchy and unnatural foods) there is really no strict limitations that will test your resolve or your patience with this method. It’s just changing up your diet to eat as naturally as possible.