Monday, March 12, 2012

Finding the Best Diet for Weight Loss

How to find the Best Weight Loss Diet Program

In working to determine the best weight loss diet program, you can quickly see that the essentials to diets are just a few.

Any and all weight can be controlled by just 2 things - calories input and calories burned.The old saw is that you "eat less, exercise more, or both". Consume fewer calories as you eat and burn more than you used to.

And that's fine to state, but harder to keep going as a program. Because there are 3 factors which control your success on any diet: physical, mental, and social. 

Physical - your body is used to certain quantities and bulk. Some people are used to simply filling their stomach area when they eat. While this was fine for teen-agers, once we hit middle age or later, our metabolism slows down and so we start storing more in fat - which is where all excess food is stored. As well, fast food restaurants know that people get addicted to fat, salt, and sugar. And a physical addiction is where the body simply adjusts to living off a certain regular amount of these substances, and won't "feel good" if these aren't present. The problem is that fast food is mostly "empty" calories - meaning that you don't get a lot of useful vitamins, minerals, or other nutrients. You can feel "full" but still not have the nutrition your body needs, so you have to eat some more - more than you should need. When you cut down the amount or type of foods you eat, then there is some pushback from the body to get some more.

Mental - as teenagers can eat anything they want, and our middle-class lifestyle (as well as the growing numbers of convenient fast food outlets) allow us to eat anywhere and any type of food we might want. Most people don't cook their own food from scratch - so we aren't used to selecting and judging amounts. We also aren't usually taught how many calories are in whatever portions we are being served. And additions also have their mental counter-part - it's giving control of that part of your life to someone or something else. Most mental "noise" is composed of habits, ways to figure out how to survive better. And habits can be changed in about 30 days of practice.

Social - these various addictions and habits are reinforced by what groups and people you have around you. You will usually pick your friends to support your own world view and beliefs. And overweight people are usually surrounded by - yes, overweight people. So this makes it harder to change, when the world around you is resisting change. So the best programs have support groups that are sponsored at either a corporate or grass-roots level, or by a combination of both. The point is to get people around you who think and act like you do, so you can change your old habits and not go back.

A successful diet system will take all five of these elements into account:

  • You'll get enough calories to sustain your health. You'll also have enough energy to do whatever you want. 

  • You'll be exercising more, but in a fashion that you can get this into your lifestyle simply. 

  • The food you get will be enough to keep you going, and not hungry during the day.

  • There will be an education program which will teach you what your portion sizes are and which foods will just be stored as fat instead of being consumed.

  • There will be a support group so you can stay on your program instead of distracted or negated from doing it.

If you take these 5 points, you'll be able to find the best weight loss diet program.

In a later article, I intend to compare the various weight loss diet programs to help you select the best one for your situation. Of course, I already have a good idea, but I frequently surprise myself as I do the research.


Learn about the real science behind the Cinch Diet Plan Introductory sampler now available.

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