Is My Diet Hurting Me?

Just because beach season is over doesn’t mean we stop caring about our bodies or how we look. If you are considering a post-summer diet you should read this first. Fad diets are everywhere you look. It seems there are hundreds of quick-fix solutions to choose from.Rapid weight loss through crash diets, eating only one type of food, eliminating an entire food group from your diet, liquids-only diet, high-protein, low-carb … the list goes on.

There are some very important things to remember when choosing a diet, first, think about the nutritional aspects. Many people go on a liquids-only diet and find they cannot sustain it. Energy levels can drop drastically, and the temptation to binge can lead you to greater weight gain rather than weight loss. You should try to opt for a diet that gives you no less than 1800 calories a day (women) and 2100 (men), so that you can easily expend these calories and more during the day. It is important that before you start any diet you consult your doctor and talk about your individual situation.

Exercise

Like it or not, exercise goes hand in hand with any diet. Among many other benefits, it has been proven that exercise helps to increase the rate of body metabolism in turn helping you to burn calories faster.

How many calories would you need to eat in order to add a pound of body fat? Just 3500 calories. It’s easy to gain one pound of fat by eating 3500+ calories but difficult to lose that same pound. In fact, losing weight is always an uphill battle! You’ll see why when you consider these facts. If you weigh 200 lbs. and you want to lose 1 pound of body fat, you’d have to:

• walk approximately 29 miles at 2 mph or
• jog for approximately 5 hours or
• swim for approximately 6 hours or
• bike for approximately 9 hours

(Sources: Ainsworth BE, Haskell WL, Whitt MC, et al. Compendium of physical activities:an update of activity codes and MET intensities. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc.,Vol. 32, No. 9, Suppl., pp. S498–S516, 2000.)

Remember, exercise cannot help you turn fat into muscle, but you can build more muscle and burn more fat at the same time through exercise!

Let’s take a look at some of the more popular diets:

Calorie-restriction diets can actually slow down your body’s metabolism. By eating fewer calories your body can go into “starvation” mode, a basic survival instinct. It actually starts storing more fat to preserve energy for future use. Because fat is stored, the body starts to convert muscles to energy. So with a calorie restriction you may lose more muscle than fat!

Low-fat diets can help you lose weight, but be careful not to cut out all fats from your diet. Some amount of fat is needed to absorb fat-soluble vitamins such as Vitamins A, D, E and K as well as other nutrients that require the presence of fat for absorption. Healthy fats include olives, vegetables oils such as canola, fish, avocados and nuts. Watch out for fat free desserts and cookies! Read the Nutrition Facts on such products – they may not contain fat but they’re likely to contain as many calories as the regular desserts.

Low-carb diets can deprive you of the necessary carbohydrates your body needs. Oats, cereals, corn—without these or similar foods in your diet, you will not get enough fiber in your diet. Fiber is needed to maintain digestive and gastrointestinal health. Carbs help to promote energy, learning and memory. The trick is to up your intake of healthier carbohydrates such as whole oats, sweet potatoes, and whole-wheat pasta.

The fact is you could lose a couple of pounds with any of these diet programs, but each of them deprives you of necessary nutrition your body needs to function correctly. When nutrition is compromised, your diet could have serious implications on health. Even if you aren’t on a specific diet, if your eating habits are not well balanced you could be missing out valuable and important nutrition. With depleted energy levels you may not be able to keep an active lifestyle, be inclined to exercise, or even run the full course of your diet.

Lose Weight, Not Nutrition!

Supplementation with a multi-vitamin could complement to your diet and can even help correct your nutritional intake. MultiVescence is an effervescent multi-vitamin that offers more energy, and a complete spectrum of nutrients such as vitamins, essential minerals, antioxidants, amino acids, L-glutamine, citrus bioflavonoids to build up immunity, and CoQ10 for heart health.

What’s more, the effervescence actually works to enable quick and full absorption of all nutrients so that your body gets the necessary nutrients it needs. MultiVescence comes in convenient single-serving packets you can carry with you anywhere for instant energy. Just mix the powder with water and you have a bubbly multivitamin to compensate for the lack of nutrition in your diet.

While you diet, lose weight and not nutrition!