What is a fad diet? Fad diets can be best described as a quick means of weight loss that are often only popular for a brief period of time. Fad diets can range from methodologies as deeply entrenched as Atkins and the Zone diet or as unsustainable as the cabbage soup diet or the Special K Challenge diet.

First of all, it needs to be understood that the weight loss claims made by advocates of these diets are not only fleeting but unhealthy as well. Diets like the cabbage soup diet and the grapefruit diet are going to, in the case of the cabbage soup diet, make you flatulent and, in both cases, have you only regain the weight immediately afterwards.

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Over the past several years fad diets have been all the rage. From Atkins to South Beach, people have been discovering new ways to solve the ago old problem of losing weight and staying healthily. Although many of these diets do work, many also have several negative effects as well. So what is the ultimate weight loss secret?

The one common ingredient all these diets share is the fact that they are “all” hypo caloric. What does hypo caloric mean. Essentially, it means you are consuming less calories than your body can burn through a given day..

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What is a Low Carb Diet? You’ll do away with bad carbs and bad fats, and start eating good fats and good carbs. What you need to understand is that you are not really on a diet, but changing the way you eat. Eating the wrong foods consistently throws your body out of balance. Most of us tend to overdue it eating processed carbs. What do I mean by processed carbs? Basically, there are two kinds of carbohydrates, simple and complex. Some refer to them as bad and good carbs, fast and slow digestion carbs and others. Here are some basic explanations:

SIMPLE CARBS – Foods with simple or refined carbohydrates most often have a low nutrient content and a high-glycemic index. They are metabolized quickly (quick to digest). They enter the bloodstream and rapidly elevate blood sugar levels, then fall dramatically within a short span of time. In order to keep the body running healthy and stable, it is recommended that these type foods be limited. Examples of these simple or overprocessed carbs are white bread, potatoes, and sugary treats like cookies, candy, cupcakes and cakes, and beverages like cola products.

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1000 calorie diet

Trying the 1000 calorie diet is only advisable for one week, due to your body entering starvation mode and conserving fat. Overdoing the 1000 calorie diet is counterproductive to your body so try to stay on it for only 1 week. After 1 week you will lose between 3-5 pounds. The 1000 calorie diet can be used as a starter diet for a long term weight loss program. Try to aim for 2-3 pounds of weight loss and a good exercise program to begin with. After 1 week on the 1000 calorie diet, try upping your calorie intake or reverting back to a not so severe diet, this will prevent your body’s metabolism from slowing down. Here is a simple 1000 calorie daily menu.

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How many times have you tried to diet/lose weight in the past?

How many times have you had some initial success only to fall
short of your goals?

How many times have you achieved your initial goals, only to see
them fly away faster than you were able to enjoy the fruits of
your labour?

Why does this happen?

In most cases, the answer is simple. You’ve failed one test…
This is a difficult test. This test I like to call consistent
persistence.

Sometimes, you will be missing other essential components. You
need to also include a variety of other things that will make
the consistent persistence useful. If you are consistently
persistent in doing the wrong things, you will still fail. So
before we get in to the final key, let’s review the other
essential components.

Successful dieting and or weight loss should always be geared
towards a total lifestyle change that you intend to be permanent.
If you cannot healthily sustain the changes for an indefinite
period, it probably isn’t the right diet for you. Reasonable
exceptions would include medically necessary emergency weight
loss, with a view to changing the program once the crisis
management was concluded.

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OK, first let’s get something straight here…

If you think that buying a shake or taking a few pills will all of a sudden make you huge, then you are mistaken.

No supplement will help you if you are not training and dieting correctly — they will just give you very expensive urine. All aspects of your program have to be in order for you to get the maximum benefit from sports nutrition supplements. From my experience, supplements enhance your program by:

1. Adding an element of convenience: Using food supplements like Meal Replacement Powders and whey protein help to eliminate the common problem of ‘not enough time’, by providing you with an quick efficient way to get your required nutrients each day.

2. Increasing strength and decreasing recovery time: Using vitamin and amino acid supplements help to minimize the negative side effects of weight training and speed your recovery.

The Benefit of Convenience

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If it’s six pack abs that you’re after, daily abdominal exercises are the key to reaching your goal. There are a variety of effective abdominal exercises that you can try out to find which one is best for you. Or, for maximum results, you can combine a few different abdominal exercises or alternate between your favorites.

Probably the simplest, and most popular, abdominal exercise is the crunch. Lying on the floor with your knees bent and feet flat will get your crunch started. Some people like to place their fingertips to the sides of the head, just behind the ears, while others like to do crunches with their arms crossed over their chest. Either way, the next step is to push your lower back to the floor and hold that while you crunch your abdominal muscles to lift your shoulders a few inches off the floor.

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Most weight loss programs focus on either diet or exercise, but that might just turn out to be a mistake. Effective weight loss depends on both, as part of an integrated program. That’s just what the Body for Life program delivers.

This is a program that combines a specialized diet consisting of five carefully balanced meals a day, combined with the right nutritional supplements and exercise that is done at specific times of the day. That, perhaps, is the key to the success of this program – the instructions are very detailed, so deciding to follow the program at all inspires a lot of dedication. Also, the results on this program tend to be very quick, which does a lot to encourage people to stick with it, even though it may be difficult.

The Body for Life program is explained in a book of the same name, and taking a quick look inside the cover of this book just might get you hooked. These pages are a composite of many ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures – with a difference. Everyone starting the program is required to have his or her picture taken in a swimsuit. If you are significantly overweight, that can be an ordeal in and of itself, but the purpose is to compare it with an ‘after’ shot, also in a swimsuit, after you have completed the program. That makes it all worthwhile. There is a dramatic difference between virtually all the before/ after shots. This is a weight loss program that really works.

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Critics of the Atkins diet have always questioned it’s health validity. When Dr Atkins was called before a Senate committee headed by George McGovern, he was forced to admit that pregnant women following his low carb diet would suffer fetal damage to their unborn babies.

Studies since have found that long term, Atkins dieters do not lose weight more quickly, or keep it off more, over a twelve month period as compared to people following other diets. The initial weight loss is mostly fluid, not fat as is often claimed.

And whilst the high levels of protein and fats, and extremely low level of carbohydrates, appeals to some people’s tastes, for most, it’s unappetizing and doesn’t produce a feeling of well being. As such, it becomes difficult to follow for long periods. Yet it is sold as a ‘way of life’, rather than a diet.

Most seriously, questions raised by Atkins’s death, and the state of his heart health as revealed in the medical report after his death, seemed to give credibility to his critics.

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While the bones meet, there’s as well cartilage, a rubbery, protective layer that controls your joints bend without pain and without. But even out cartilage can’t do this enormous job only. A thin membrane called synovium “provides fluid that lubricates the moving parts put together. While the cartilage wears on the synovium becomes inflamed, the result is mostly “osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis.”

In osteoarthritis, the cartilage perhaps weakened to the point that the bone doesn’t rub on bone. These type of arthritis acquires in small stages over the life of a simple result of wear and tear on the joints over the years. Very few people escape some degree of osteoarthritis, although the severity varies widely.

As it’s, as a matter of fact, whether you’ve more than 50 years, you are probably to have at least one joint affected by osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis affects men and women and so far the most common form of arthritis, with nearly 16 million Americans on the list. [Read more →]