A balanced Diet for long term health
Fashion diets and healthy weight - just my thoughts
What would happen if you were asked to drive from Texas to New York and then halfway through the trip, you are asked to go to Las Vegas instead? Wasted fuel and wasted time. Then, when approaching the Nevada border, you are told to turn around. Again. And head back to New York. The next day: Turn around, go west again. By now you are beyond exhausted and irritable.
This is similar to what happens with your liver when you eat a certain way, and then change your diet. Your liver expends enzymes to digest your food according to what you feed it, and it take 21 days to switch gears and metabolize your food another way.
Fortunately your liver knows only two essential directions: break down fat to sugar, and rearrange sugar to fat.
You tell your liver what to do when you deliver food to your stomach. Here is how it goes:
Ingested fat and protein must be broken down to sugar, and then sugar is used as fuel for muscles and various metabolic processes. But sugar in your bloodstream that remains unused for about 5 minutes is converted to fat.
The simple fact is that excess calories will be converted to fat storage. The liver must either make enzymes to break down fat, or make different enzymes to break down the sugar you eat. If you consume more carbohydrates, your liver will make enzymes to convert the carbohydrates to fat; it becomes proficient at this within about 3 weeks. If you deprive your body of carbohydrates and instead consume more protein and fat, your liver has to ramp up the production of enzymes to break down fat. Those enzymes will still be there when there is no more food to break down. The nice part about this: Now your liver is primed to break down excess fat in your body and will continue to do so unless it is overwhelmed with sugary (or "carbohydrate-y") foods too often.
My thoughts on weight loss are this:
Before and above all else, get a workup with your doctor to be sure you are not fighting diabetes or a thyroid disorder.
1. If is it white, don't bite. Unless it is chicken or fish of course.
2. Keep a food diary.
3. Lower your carb intake by half for three weeks.
4. When you are hungry, wait 10 minutes. Then eat for 15 minutes.
5. Now wait 30 minutes. If you are still hungry, eat for 10 more minutes and then stop.
6. If you are still hungry before your next meal, you may be bored or stress eating. Consider the possibilities and find an activity to relieve the drive to eat. For example: go for a walk, call a friend, or read a book.
7. After three weeks, reassess and determine if your tactics are working. If not, you may need to lower your carbs more.
8. Be sure to take a multivitamin, also take prebiotics and probiotics. And drink plenty of water. Seriously, drink water.
Just a little experiment
Not all calories are the same. Some are easily digested and immediately put to use or turned to fat. Some are indigestible, like fiber. When fiber is in your diet it slows down the absorption of your food, this allows more nutrients to reach the good bacteria that live further down in your intestinal tract.
Everyone has their preferences for food, and we can all find plenty of food with fiber to help us maintain a healthier digestive system to provide us with proper nutrition.
I do not endorse a specific diet because, in essence, if the dietary changes are not permanent or just too intolerable, it can 'confuse' the metabolic system.
Unfortunately, whether you are underweight or overweight, you must eat a balanced diet.
I was once overweight, and began losing weight because of neurological changes. The effect was simple: I lost my appetite and ate less food. Knowing that I could not eat much food, I had to make good food choices and also had to avoid all sugar. This increased my weight loss.
As an experiment, I went ahead and ate ice cream at night for a month. Not too much, maybe 3/4 of a cup of ice cream. I gained 10 pounds. See how easy THAT was?
So for the next month, I substituted unsweetened natural applesauce and lost 4 pounds.