Starting a Healthy Lifestyle Part Three

Modern diets give the idea that cutting certain things completely out of your diet will help you lose weight, this is absolutely not true. Cutting a certain food group from your diet is harmful. Your body needs a variety of foods and energy to survive and cutting one of these out completely is harmful and will keep you overweight.

1)      Carbs

This is a major dietary problem, the low or no carb diets are harmful, carbohydrates should make up 45-65% of your entire food intake every day. These are the main forms of energy in our diets and without them your body will slowly fail and you will store fat to compensate for the lack of energy supply.  Eating whole wheat breads, pasta and rice is the best way to get all you can out of your carbs and too many are bad but “not enough” is far worse. Try dark rye bread, it has 3 grams more fibre than whole wheat per cup of flour and fibre is essential to losing weight.

2)      Salt

You cannot cut salt completely out of your diet. While most of North America eats way too much sodium, cutting it out is unhealthy. Sodium is required for many bodily functions, even glandular, without iodide (added into able salt) your thyroid gland will stop producing hormones. This can cause many problems including massive weight gain. To counteract over use of salt, drink lots of water and cut down if you take too much, but never cut it out.

3)      Sugar

Sugars are essentially carbs but we usually think of them differently. Any diet that prohibits intake of fruit is not a diet for a healthy body, it is incredibly important to eat sugars in moderate amounts and cutting them out is harmful in many ways. Sugar, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t make you fat, however much of the sugar we eat is in fact in high fat foods and this is where the problem usually comes in. Eat sugar in the right portions and you will be fine, do not stop eating it.

4)      Fat

Do not cut out fat from your diet, fats should make up 20-45% of your daily intake of food. Transfat and highly saturated fat is what you need to stay away from, but polyunsaturated fat is very beneficial to the body and is essential in weight loss. The best fats to look for are omega 3, omega 6 and polyunsaturated fatty acids, eat lots of fish and nuts and your fat intake will be healthier than cheeses and meats. If you cut out fat completely your body will store it and you will not lose weight.

Losing weight too fast can be harmful, it can cause nephroptosis (dropping of the kidneys from loss of fat) and other harmful conditions and it is never appropriate to starve yourself. Eat healthy and your body will thank you.