Reasons to Diet Part 2
Following on from the last post in this series, it would be remiss of us to omit the mental processes that are going on in everyone especially when they gain weight. What starts as snacking to curb a craving for what amounts to comfort eating to help us get over a traumatic event, or something that has depressed us, can progress to a long term habit that results in constant weight gain.
This goes on and on, with the person’s weight spiraling out of control if nothing is done to break the cycle. So this is about breaking that cycle and what needs to happen on a mental level to bring that about.
The first thing that has to happen is the person has to make a conscious decision that will stop their bad eating habits because they want to stop gaining weight and reverse the trend so they can then lose the excess they had gained. This is probably the most important part of all this, because no one else can do this part for you. It has to come from your own decision and only you can make that decision.
Its no different from an alcoholic becoming a reformed alcoholic when they (and no one else) make up their minds not to drink any more.
Eating habits can become very strong, especially when they are linked emotionally and can create food addictions that are very tough to break. The ties have, nevertheless, to be broken and often that can only happen by dealing with the thing that is causing the emotional upset. Once that has been overcome, then you can start to work on weaning yourself off the food addiction and give yourself more good reasons to diet.
It doesn’t really matter what it is that you have become addicted to eating as it is generally not the food itself but the need for the food that has such a strong hold on you. It is more common to become addicted to high calorie, sugary or high GI carb food as this seems to satisfy the craving for a short time. But the addiction can be broken once you have made the decision to do so.
Start by not buying the foods that are causing the problems when you are at the supermarket. These are generally the processed foods that contain artificial additives and trans fats. This takes away the convenient side to things, where all you needed to do was open the pantry and there would be the foods you crave. Instead, if the foods are not in the house you either have to go out specially to buy them or go without. Often, it is just easier to go without and do something else. That something else can be drinking a glass of plain water, which is actually very good at curbing food cravings. So can drinking unsweetened green tea or other herbal teas. Doing some exercises can take your mind off a bad craving and in a short while the craving will be forgotten as you get into the workout.
There are many ways of beating food cravings and we’ll look at more of these in future posts.
Food for Health
Reasons to Diet Part 1
There are lots of reasons to diet, not least of all that which will bring about a reduction in body weight and help a person to look slimmer and feel more healthy. In this post, which is the first part of a multi-part article, we will look at the health angle of dieting from a perspective of improving the body’s physical health by supplying it with the right kinds of nutrients to sustain it and allow it to grow and maintain its optimum level of health.
The food we eat is responsible for a great many aspects of our lives. the saying, “you are what you eat” is very true on a number of different levels. When it comes to our health, the food we put into our bodies really does reflect on the kind of health we can expect to enjoy or not as the case may be.
Eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables is part of the way in which we provide our bodies with many of the essential nutrients as well as dietary fiber that we need to maintain good health. This is aided by eating plenty of protein rich foods such as lean meat, poultry, eggs, fish along with vegetable options such as legumes, nuts and seeds.
Protein is essential for muscle growth and that muscle growth is essential for keeping our bodies burning sufficient calories to prevent weight gain. When our muscles are strong and active, our metabolism is elevated and we digest our food more efficiently while burning more of the calories that food contains before it gets a chance to be converted into fat for storage by the body.
Likewise, we also need carbohydrates to provide the sugars that our body will burn to give energy to the muscles so they can work. Of course, if you are overweight, then you can reduce your intake of carbohydrates to force the body to take its energy from the fat store, but once it is all used up, you will need to start reintroducing them to keep things going, or you may get into a negative cycle where the body then starts to take muscle bulk to keep providing that energy and muscles begin to reduce in strength setting up a downward spiral of lower metabolism, lack of energy and ultimately, malnutrition and anorexia.
So you can see it is important to be aware of what your body needs with regards the food your eat. There are many great reasons to diet so you remain fit and healthy and able to exercise to promote that good health that you attain through a healthy diet.
Food for Health
Trans Fats are Bad For You!
If there is one of the modern additives to a lot of processed food that you really want to steer clear of it at all possible that’s trans fats. Otherwise known as hydrogenated vegetable oil, or partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, this additive gets into so many processed foods and commercially fried fast foods its unbelievable. Yet people are generally blase about it an carry on eating all that junk regardless.
Well, one thing you are not going to be able to ignore is that you will have to avoid trans fats to lose weight, assuming you are serious about losing weight in a healthy and responsible way. That doesn’t account for those who still believe in a magic bullet or a swift slice or two of the surgeon’s knife can right all wrongs!
Trans fats are well known for raising bad LDL cholesterol levels in the blood, raising the risk of coronary problems and high blood pressure, but they also play havoc with your digestive system by fooling your brain into thinking your not full up when you are! So its way too easy to overeat foods that contains these saturated fats and overload on calories which naturally leads to weight gain and eventually obesity if nothing is done to curb the intake of foods that contains them. Switching to wholesome weight loss diets is one way of accomplishing this.
Its easy enough to change your diet if you are aware of what you are eating by simply reading the labels on packet food in the store and by avoiding eating in fast food restaurants. You need to make the quantum shift from eating convenience foods to cooking your own home cooked meals, but the benefits to improved health are just so worth it! Its cheaper to buy fresh whole foods and cook them yourself anyway, so citing cost as a reason for not making the switch is pretty lame.
Laziness at not wanting to cook is the main reason most people opt for convenient, ready to eat meals. Yet it doesn’t really take much more effort or time to create a home cooked stir fried meal made in healthy olive oil without any bad additives and you get to choose what herbs and spices you add for flavor. You never know, once you learn to cook those kind of meals, you might want to experiment and see what else you can create in that little used room known as the kitchen!