Diet and Nutrition
Q- Then what should we be counting? Should we be counting calories carbohydrates or fat?
A- Let me just go on a little further and we will come back to that.
If you look at carbohydrates it is the same scenario. Each gram of carbohydrates contains 4 grams of fat. This is why fat is so important. It is almost twice that of protein and carbohydrates.
So one gram of fat contains roughly 9 calories. So if you start talking about the Atkins diet, it depends on how you set up the study. You can get any variety of results you want.
You know the Atkins diet is one of my favorites to pick on because the early studies showed that people lost more weight initially and overall the diet was more effective than other diets.
Well I believe that since then they have gone bankrupt. Some where along the line people were starting to figure out that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. What seems to be the case now when you start looking at the numbers is when you have enough people on the diets it becomes statistically significant.
What it seems to boil down to is Atkins restricts your intake to mainly fat and protein and by eliminating carbohydrates from the diet it takes away so many of the food choices that are available.
You know, even lovers of protein and fat what they find that restrictions your variety and choices are taken away and what you do is actually limiting your caloric intake. Just because you don’t have the wide variety of choices you can make any more. So it works initially and that is one of the reasons why people are so attracted to it.
95% of diets fail and what it really comes down to if you want to lose weight it has to be something that you decide to make as a lifestyle change. You know, a diet is only temporary. You go on it and what are you going to do eventually? You are going to go off it.
In my definition that is not a lifestyle change that is a temporary fix. You know that is human nature. You go on the diet and eventually you are going to go off it and revert back to you old eating habits and gain the weight back.
It all comes down to understanding a little bit more to understanding the foods that you are eating and a choice to make a lifestyle change. Also almost all of these diet plans introduce a new way of eating, a way that is abnormal to the way that you are used to eating and we are creatures of habit and we like the foods that we are used to.
And because we are creatures of habit we don’t adapt very well to changes like that. We can go on it for a while and because it is so abnormal it just doesn’t fit. If you are a busy mom and you are rushing your kids back and forth to school you then all of the sudden you have to prepare these kinds of foods and eat these certain foods it basically forces you off the diet.
It all comes down to the fact that you have to make a decision that you are going to change the way you eat and it doesn’t’ have to be an abrupt change you just need to understand more about what you are eating and what the energy value is and the nutrient value is of the foods you are consuming.
I know the nutritional value of the foods I am eating. I keep a running tabulation in my mind of the foods I have eaten and what I am going to eat today and how I am going to balance it out.
I know that if I have been naughty in eating too many chocolate chip cookies then the next day I am going to watch what I eat.
You know we talked about people and their eating habits and they are so ingrained, how can we change our eating habits. One of the things that I have noticed is that if you are doing something healthy for yourself, if you will just go out and walk 15 minutes a day the easier it will be to put aside the unhealthy ones.
When you do something like walk 15 minutes and then you are standing in front of the chocolate chip cookies you are more likely to start thinking should I eat those cookies or shouldn’t I, well I think it becomes a little more easier to make healthy choices. The more healthy choices you make the easier it is to incorporate more.
It’s almost like the unhealthy choices don’t fit anymore. They are incompatible with the healthy choices. You know, I have quoted that adage that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Well it’s almost the same applied to health and nutrition.
As I kick around health and nutrition with people that are into it like I am, I find that if you do exercise and have more muscle mass you burn more calories when you are at rest. Lean muscle mass has a higher metabolic requirement. When you are just sitting around doing nothing and your body has more lean muscle mass you are going to burn more calories than if your body contains fatty tissue.
It’s kind of a cruel injustice but the fitter you get even at rest you are burning more calories. The basil metabolic requirement on a daily basis may be a very small percent of your total energy needs as compared to other ways you burn energy. The basil metabolic requirement is just how much energy you need to sustain your basic metabolic processes, like breathing, heartbeat and digestion and those things.
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