Weight Loss Article - The No Carbs after 5PM Diet

February 11th, 2007 webmaster

Carbohydrates seem to be one of the banes of our existence. Sure they take away the nasty feeling of hunger that makes us reach out for foods that we should not eat, but they’re still on the list of most wanted culprits in many cases of big bellies and fat thighs. Small wonder that many diets focus directly on cutting off the access to carbohydrates. These are called low-carbs diets and are among the most successful diets around when the principle is applied correctly. So let’s discuss another low-carbs diet and how good is it for your health.

The “No Carbs after 5 PM” diet, also known as the Carbs Curfew diet among the aficionados, is based on the idea that you don’t have to try all that hard to lose weight. Simply cutting off all carbohydrates after 5 PM is supposed to be enough for weight loss purposes. Not eating any carbohydrates after 5 PM serves to lower the overall intake of calories for the day, while eating more protein than usual helps make you feel full in a healthy way. this is a simple eating plan that can be understood by anybody in no time. No complex formulae here.

The eating plan is spread across 28 days and lets the user exercise his or her choices regarding the breakfast, lunch and Carb Curfew Meal every day. Snacks are restricted to fruits and vegetables and there’s one mandatory pint (that’s about half a liter) of skimmed or semi-skimmed milk to be had every day. The eating plan comes with an exercise plan designed to help the weight loss process with long walks and exercising of the abdominal muscles. There are a lot of food recipes to choose from, which makes it all the easier to stick to the program.

This diet has nice potential. People who have trouble sticking to harsher low-carbs diets will appreciate the fact that the breakfast and lunch can be as rich in carbs as the users like. Not to mention that they don’t have to spend time counting every last unit of carbs or proteins, they don’t have to bother with blood sugar levels, glycemic index values or circadian rhythms. As long as you can remember that carbs are not allowed after 5 PM, you’re bound to succeed. On the negative side, however, it doesn’t take a lot of dieting experience to see that this diet may be slower than others. Also there is no minimum weight lost promise, so be careful when setting your target weight.

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Weight Loss Article - The Mayo Clinic Diet

February 10th, 2007 webmaster

Welcome to the Mayo Clinic Diet that doesn’t come from the Mayo Clinic. This diet is a strange idea that has been floating around for a long time, despite the fact that it is not endorsed by the Mayo Clinic. Once again dieters are face to face with the misleading idea that somehow grapefruit burns fat, which leaves the dieter free to indulge in high fat food like ham and eggs for breakfast and meat, vegetables and salad dressing for lunch and dinner. This is not a diet, but a dream come true! Or, at least, it would be a dream if it actually worked.

Right from the start this diet sounds too good to be true. Any kind of meat and any amount of it at every lunch and dinner? With any amount of vegetables? And salad dressing on top? So where does the weight loss part come in? This must be every fast food lover’s dream. Unfortunately, half of grapefruit and half a glass of grapefruit juice cannot burn away fat in any circumstances, much less when the dieter is busy feasting on meat and vegetables. While it’s true that this diet bans complex carbohydrates in order to help weight loss it is worth remembering that these complex carbs are the main energy source for the body.

Even if the idea that grapefruit burns fat just like that was proved correct, this diet is still too unbalanced to be a sound long-term eating plan. Fried foods and fat foods are associated with increased risks of heart diseases and cancer, which is not a good tradeoff for lower body weight. Eating large portions of food on a regular basis is also not a very good idea and it certainly does not square with a strict diet.

Basically, this seems to be one of those diets that count on using the names of famous institutions or famous people in order to push silly ideas. What’s worse is that some people are desperate enough to actually believe in this type of eating plan, especially since they are attracted to the idea of a diet rich in meat. This diet is unbalanced from the nutritional point of view and encourages overeating. Avoid it and choose a better eating plan instead; one that doesn’t sound as good, but which will help you lose weight.

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Weight Loss Article - The Grapefruit Diet

February 9th, 2007 webmaster

The Grapefruit Diet is one of the fad diets that were really popular back in the 1980s although it has been in one form or another since 1930. Most of the time, the grapefruit diet has been discounted by experts as dangerously unbalanced or simply unable to deliver on its promises. It was generally thought that consuming vast quantities of grapefruit cannot influence weight loss in any way, which relegated this diet to the status of yet another fad, one of those things people go crazy about without any real reason. However, time has passed and new discoveries are about to rock the traditional view.

The basic idea behind this diet is to eat grapefruit whenever you can, drink a glass of unsweetened grapefruit juice with every meal, add grapefruit to cocktails and also to salads. Grapefruit is supposed to go well with the lean meat from crab and chicken and with vegetables, such as red onions, spinach and celery. The biggest advantage is, of course, the fact that grapefruit is virtually fat-free and has few calories. An entire grapefruit has about 70 calories, which means that you can eat about as much as you can stomach and still lose weight.

The best thing about the Grapefruit Diet is a recent study carried out by a team of scientists led by Doctor Ken Fujioka, from the Nutrition and Metabolic Research Center of the Scripps Clinic in San Diego. The study has found that, contrary to the opinions voiced by experts in the 1980s, adding grapefruit and grapefruit juice to your diet can actually help you lose weight. And what’s really great about it: you don’t have to change your eating habits at all. Naturally, eating less fat and sweets and doing some exercises is a very good way of speeding up the weight loss process, but you don’t have to go out of your way with this diet.

According to the study, eating half a grapefruit before each meal and exercising a bit every day helped a group of obese people drop an average 3.6 pounds in 12 weeks without any change in their eating habits whatsoever. A second group had to drink a glass of grapefruit juice before every meal and lost 3.3 pounds in the same 12 weeks. While it’s true that losing 1 pound per month gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “slow diet”, you have to appreciate a diet that lets you eat whatever you like and still shed a pound per month. If weight loss is not a stringent affair, then you can stick to this diet for a long time and reap the benefits.

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