These are four of the most common questions I get about diet when a new client starts.
What’s the best diet to lose weight?
Whatever weight loss program you choose, it should be something you can sustain for a long time. Losing weight is difficult, but keeping it off is even tougher.
Vegetables are key to a healthy diet, as trainer Leigh Pujado visits the local produce section.
Gimmicky programs you aren’t willing to stick with set you up for a rebound and diet failure. Once many dieters achieve their weight loss goals, they return to their old eating habits. But now they’re dealing with a slower metabolism, so a return to “previously normal eating” quickly piles weight back on.
The quickest way to change is to include more vegetables in your diet.
Should you cut carbs to get the body you want?
The tragic problem with modern dieters is that many think all carbohydrates are bad. Here’s where people get confused. Both sugar and fiber are carbohydrates, and the average American only eats about half as much fiber as they should. You have to learn to ignore the carbohydrates listed on the label and concentrate on sugar and fiber separately.
According to the World Health Organization, a healthy person should get no more than 6%-10% of their total calories from sugar. That works out to between 40 and 55 grams of sugar per person per day.
According to the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine, the amount of fiber you should take in varies by gender and age. Here’s what they suggest.
Men aged 18-50 should get at least 38 grams and older than 50 at least 30 grams. Women aged 18-50 should get at least 25 grams and older than 50 at least 21 grams. Remember, those numbers are the minimums, so taking in more is fine if you don’t exceed your daily calories.
Look for whole-grain products like whole-wheat bread, oatmeal, rye and barley. Eat vegetables and fruit at least twice a day. Start now, and you’ll see benefits in as little as two weeks.
What are the healthiest foods to eat?
Find foods that fill you up without being full of calories. As you lose weight, your hormones change. Leptin is a hormone released by fat cells, signaling your brain when to start and stop eating.
When you lose weight, your fat cells shrink, and the amount of leptin they release drops. As leptin levels decrease, hunger increases. After only seven days on a diet, you’re typically dealing with a significantly reduced metabolism and increased hunger levels.
There are two ways of dealing with this. Every day, look for foods with a lot of bulk but not many calories. Vegetables are a prime example. A large bowl of broccoli or cauliflower may have less than 150 calories, but it takes up a lot of space in your stomach. As it pushes against the walls of your stomach, your body gets the signal that it’s full.
Should you take supplements?
Supplements are not regulated as medicine. No government agencies verify supplements work for the things they are promoted to help with. Supplements are not inspected to verify the ingredients on the label are actually in the product. Supplements are also not tested for safety.
The result of this non-existent oversight is that there are hundreds of worthless and dangerous products being sold to unsuspecting consumers every day. A new study that was released in 2018 said this:
“... analysis of the US Food and Drug Administration warnings from 2007 through 2016 showed that unapproved pharmaceutical ingredients were identified in 776 dietary supplements, and these products were commonly marketed for sexual enhancement, weight loss, or muscle building. The most common adulterants were sildenafil for sexual enhancement supplements, sibutramine for weight loss supplements, and synthetic steroids or steroid-like ingredients for muscle building supplements, with 157 products (20.2%) containing more than 1 unapproved ingredient.”
You read that right. Nearly 800 products had things in the bottle that weren’t on the label.
You might wonder why it’s such a big deal. A study done in 2015 concluded that 23,000 people wind up in the emergency room every year from supplements, and 2,000 are hospitalized. What’s worse are the tens of thousands of people who purchase these fake products, hoping for a miracle while not seeking professional advice that actually has a chance to help or cure them.
Avoid supplements unless prescribed by a doctor for a specific medical condition.
Check with your doctor before beginning any diet or exercise program. For a free consultation with a WeBeFit trainer, call 305-296-3434. Read articles online at http://www.webefit.com and get updates by following us on Facebook.
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