Fitness so much more important than most people imagine. Fitness isn’t just about looking good, but about feeling your best and being able to dig in and enjoy life. Diet fitness is probably the most important element to success and being able to reach your personal goals.

The food you eat accounts for up to 80% of your fitness efforts. This truly puts a different spin on the way we should be looking at food and how it applies to our fitness goals. If you’ve ever heard the phrase “Garbage In, Garbage Out”, it should be particularly important when it comes to our bodies on a daily basis. It’s impossible to feel your best when you fill your body with food that amounts to nutritional garbage.

So what does diet fitness mean and how can it be achieved?

Very simply put, diet fitness is giving your body the required nutrition from the food you eat to increase and maintain health and physical fitness. Does that sound too simplistic? It actually isn’t is hard as some people believe. It’s all about the choices we make every time we sit down to eat.

The quickest way to make a giant leap forward in your diet fitness goals is to give up processed foods. Most people perceive giving up their chippy dippy boxed snacks and sweets as a terrible sacrifice rather than taking a positive stand and improving their health. Remember that the majority of food manufacturers aren’t interested in your health, they are only interested in separating you from your money.

Become a food snob! Exercise your right to a healthy and beautiful body by refusing to purchase or eat inferior overly processed food. Demand fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains and lean meats at every meal. Aim for as much as 85% of each day’s diet to come from raw, whole, unprocessed food as close to it’s natural state as possible.

By embracing whole and unprocessed foods as the major portion of your daily food intake, you will go a long way in achieving diet fitness and a healthy body.

Taken from Diet fitness – you are really are what you eat

You long for firmer muscles and smaller waist. Everybody does. Do you think you can’t lose weight? Yes, you can. But the truth is you can’t lose weight without a diet – a plan.

Low Carb Diet

Weight-loss experts and diet plan authors all agree that much of our excess weight comes from the carbohydrates we eat, especially the highly refined or processed ones such as potatoes, baked goods, bread, pasta and other convenient foods. To aggravate the problem, few of us get enough exercise to ward off excess pounds.

The basic science behind the low carb diet is to limit the consumption of foods with a lot of carbohydrates. The low carb diet includes many popular weight-loss programs such as the Atkins, South Beach, Zone and Carbohydrate Addict Diet.

Does It Really Work?

One of the food groups which the body needs to survive are carbohydrates. Carbohydrates also referred to as carbs come in two types – sugars and starches. Sugars are simple carbs usually sweet tasting like biscuits and sweets and easily digested. Whereas, starches are complex carbs found in bread, pasta, noodles and rice and take longer to digest.

The body transforms all these digestible carbs into glucose, the sugar that our cells use as fuel or energy. When glucose molecules pass from the intestine into the bloodstream, the pancreas releases insulin, a hormone that mobilises cells to absorb it. Muscle, fat and other cells then absorb the excess glucose from the blood and insulin levels return to normal.

After a meal high in glycemic index (ranking of foods according to how fast their sugars are released into the bloodstream), blood-sugar levels rise higher and rapidly. The insulin needed to fill all that sugar into muscles and fat cells also weaken the activity of glucagon, a hormone that signals the body to burn stored fuel when blood-sugar levels fall below a certain point. Glucose level drops so low leaving the body starved for energy. The brain and intestine then send out hunger signals. New cravings are created requiring more carb intake. We, then overeat that leads to more fat, rise in blood insulin level, more hunger, and more weight gain and the cycle goes on.

On the contrary, adhering to a low carb diet puts an end to this cycle. Reduced carbohydrates would mean decreased insulin level, increased glucagon level, weight loss, improved triglycerides (fats carried in the blood which are necessary but when excessive cause coronary damage), decrease in LDL (bad cholesterol), increase in HDL (good cholesterol).

The bottom line – Give refined or processed carbohydrates which cause rapid changes in blood sugar, trigger hunger, thereby encouraging overeating that ultimately leads to obesity smaller spots on your plate. Anyway, nobody ever died from skipping potatoes, pasta, rice and white bread.

That said; go get yourself a few good low carb cookbooks. Better still, leaf through this site’s 1,000+ low carb recipes – a seemingly endless variety of recipes. Try every recipe imaginable and make this diet as enjoyable and diverse as possible.

Yes, you can diet. Lose weight! Live longer!

From The science of low-carb diets – why they work

The hallmark of a modern developed society seems to be people with those ugly bulges. And lots of dieting ads! Okay, let’s face it. We will have to live with dieting. The question then is how to do it effectively and safely.

Dieting refers to regulated food intake to satisfy a short-term goal: losing weight or adding it. Diet refers to the food items that form the dieting process.

Human beings need essential nutrients such as proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals. A well-balanced diet must meet these nutritional requirements or it could threaten general health and physical fitness. The diet must make the person healthy enough to be active and still provide only enough calories that can be burned away in the course of a day without it accumulating as fat.

The fact is not every diet works for everyone. That is because there are metabolic differences between individuals. The challenge is to choose a diet that works for you. This you can do only with the help of a physician.

Diet pills are quite popular among health-conscious individuals. Some diet pills are associated with comprehensive dietary programs. However, these diet pills, especially the ones containing vitamins and minerals are not effective weight-loss tools for everyone. Some medicines cause short-term weight loss, but the loss is normally accompanied by dangerous side-effects.

Diet drugs can be classified into diuretics and stimulants. Diuretics induce water-weight loss, while stimulants such as ephedrine increase the heart rate and reduce appetite. These drugs can also cause kidney and liver damage. The stimulants increase your risk of sudden heart attacks and also cause addiction. Always look for FDA approval for these diet drugs.

Exotic dieting patterns are not just ineffective, but dangerouus as well. Starvation diets are undertaken by many to gain that perfect figure – the lean and athletic Ally McBeal look. But these diets are normally counterproductive. Yo-yo dieting refers to alternating periods of feasting and famine. It too is quite ineffective. When you starve, the body responds by decreasing metabolism. When you begin consuming food agan, the food gets stored as fat. These adjustments leave the dieter feeling lethargic and fatigued.

Certain medical conditions require special diets. A diabetic person is put on a diet for managing the blood sugar level, while mild hypertension is partly cured by following a diet of fruits and vegetables and a diet low in fat and sodium. The hypertension diet could focus on weight loss, if controlling blood pressure is necessary. Celiac disease patients follow a gluten-free diet, while people with kidney disease are required to follow a low-sodium diet to lessen the load on the kidneys. Lactose-intolerant people leave out milk products from their diet.

Many diets include medicinal plants. These herbs include leaves, bark, berries, roots, gums, seeds, stems, and flowers. They come in the form of tablets, capsules, liquid beverages, bark pieces, powders, tinctures, fluid extracts, creams, lotions, salves, and oils. These medicines include herbal products which are avaiable over-the-counter or at health food stores. However, it’s always better to consume medications prescribed by doctors and provided by pharmacists.

Go on a diet if you need to. But play it safe, and do it in consultation with your doctor. And remember, if one diet does not work for you, it doesn’t mean you have failed. You could still find a diet regimen that will work wonders for you!

From Which diets suit you best?