by Tanya Zilberter, PhD
This article is sponsored by Burn the Fat
While waiting usually bored to tears in check-out lines, you cant help reading the glossy hype on magazine covers. Who hasn't read about the promise to fix any weight problem "quick and easy?" There is no lack of miracle diets, nodded diets and no-workout exercise systems; no shortage of no-fat foods and low-fat recipes; no sign of "get-thin-quick" products and services drying up in the future. So why are Americans getting bigger and bigger and bigger? All of us men, women and children. Why?
A human being has a basic biological nature, but it's the only biological species to radically evolve and advance without changing its basic body structure. As a result, our bodies need the same nourishment that was good for our predecessors tens of thousands of years ago, but our current lifestyle doesn't give us a chance to get it. Yet, if you eat right and exercise right, you're healthy and no need to worry about, right?
Let's see. The Wellness Letter Berkeley from University of California-Berkeley, published a book of recipes for healthy foods with tables of vitamins, minerals, microelements, proteins, fats, carbohydrates and calories per serving.
I calculated the calorie intake from a diet based on these recipes and the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) values for 50 essential nutrients. The result was incredible: from 4,000 to 10,000 calories! That's a lot! Is there anybody who could burn them all?
This amount was about the same that was needed by our cave dwelling ancestors simply to survival. Theirs was a life spent on their feet; hunting prey; escaping predators; spending enormous amounts of energy to stay warm during winter or to cool during hot weather; fighting infections and parasites; losing blood; healing wounds; gathering edible plants; and women being either pregnant or nursing.
To gain some fat for the rainy days was bliss. Those 4,000 to 10,000 calories were spent as almost as soon as were gained. Since our ancestors most likely created so-called omnivorousness, or eating anything they could stomach, it mattered little where the calories were coming from: prey, plants or wild honey. Some people were lucky to have mostly prey, others could get more leaves or tubers, and very few could get honey in amounts that would lead us to believe there was any high-carbohydrate diet available.
Some cultures still live on mono diets. Take the Nordic population: its rations are mostly animal fat and protein. As long as they don't mess with "white deaths" (sugar and refined flour) and "fire water" (alcohol) they're caloric intake is irrelevant.
To Eat or Not To Eat?
As for the rest of us: rarely does anyone burn more than 2,500 calories. In fact, the average calorie intake for Americans is 2,000 to 2,500, and that is overeating for most people. We are faced with options:
Choice 1: If we eat enough to get all the necessary nutrients, we consume too many calories and become overweight.
Choice 2: If we limit our calorie intake to maintain the proper weight, we do no have enough nutrients to maintain good health.
Choice 3: We can limit calorie intake and substitute for the missing nutrients with supplements.
Choice 3 was the cause of the rise of multibillion-dollar supplement industry. Yet, Americans are getting bigger. So, as you can see, there's actually no choice but to do something radical. Here comes the general idea to eat not all you please, but only certain food while avoiding other foods.
What To Eat? What To Avoid?
Again, we are faced with basically three choices:
Choice 1: Reduce calories.
Choice 2: Reduce fat.
Choice 3: Reduce carbohydrates.
Any one of them can be good for someone, and worthless or bad for someone else. Lets look at the each choice a little more closely.
What if I reduce calories?
You'll be hungry. And hunger signals your body to get those calories as soon as it suspects you are starving.
Further, any low-calorie diet burns not only fat, but also muscle. Reduced muscle mass causes your metabolism to slow down and the calorie reduction escalates, leading to malnutrition or to regaining all the lost weight plus some.
What if I reduce fats?
Fat reduction can help if you don't have too many pounds to lose. The glitch is, while any low-fat diet prevents fat depositing, it also makes fat burning impossible.
I'd also like to mention here that there was a trend of using low-fat diets to improve blood cholesterol and decrease the risk of cardio-vascular diseases, but recent clinical data questioned this approach.
What if I reduce carbs?
This is my personal choice. This is why I believe that this is the best option for those who failed many times before.
First and most important is that low-carb diets preserve muscle while burning the body's fat for fuel. Second, low-carb diets don't make you hungry. There actually are many more benefits, and this entire site is about these benefits.
Chances are great that you'll like low-carbing so much, it will become part of your lifestyle. Add exercise, and there will be no problem with keeping the weight off for the rest of your life.
