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Dieting To Lose Fat
What you eat and what you drink is one of the critical factors in losing (or gaining) fat fast. While starvation will hardly bring you the desired fat loss, excessive eating, especially when accompanied by a lack of phisycal activity, is bound to keep you fat. With all that said, it is necessary to make clear that dieting constitutes a science in its own and if you decide to start a diet, you need to have at least a basic idea about the major chemical substances that your body can't do without. Successful fat loss needs balanced nutrition and all diets that proclaim fat loss by excluding particular food (milk, sugar, etc.) are not the right way to becoming slim. Basically, weight loss boils down to obtaining less calories than you burn throughout the day. The optimal daily dosage of calories varies for active people, who burn lots of energy and for people who spend their whole day at a desk. So, if for the first category 3,000 calories a day is the right amount for preserving their weight, for the second group 2,000 calories daily is the optimal. There are many formulas to calculate the optimal daily input for preserving one's weight and for losing it but generally the most important factor is your lifestyle. Food that is sold in supermarkets, often provides information about the calories in it, as well as its chemical composition – carbohydrates, fats, sugars, minerals, etc. Most fast-food restaurants also provide such information about the food they offer. Besides, there are many tables that list how many calories are burnt by different activities like jogging, swimming, etc. So if you are a maths freak, you might even find pleasure in calculating your daily input and output of calories. Equally important to the number of calories is where they come from. As you probably remember from school your body needs proteins, carbohydrates, fats and water. These are the four basic blocks of a good diet. While the first three are very famous, the fourth one – water is often neglected. Water is calorie free and you don't have to count it in your daily calorie input. However, since your body needs water and if you deprive it from this vital liquid, you might get the misleading feeling that you are losing fat but actually you are risking to get dehydrated. A healthy diet requires a rational daily intake of proteins, carbohydrates, fats and water. Low-carb diets are often advocated as a solution but actually their long-term effects are still unclear. The same applies to high-protein diets. Fats are the usual suspect that gets kicked out of a diet but this is fair only for saturated fats. So the best solution is to keep to a balanced diet that includes proteins, less carbohydrates and no bad fats. But where are the basic substances found? Proteins can be obtained from meat (not the fat parts) like chicken, beef, pork, lamb, veal, egg whites. Fruit and vegetables are a natural source of good carbohydrates. Candy, sweets and chocolate are certainly to be avoided as a source of carb, because the contain mainly bad carbs. Animal fat must be excluded from your diet. The daily input of fats can be from nuts, seeds and olive oil, which is safe, unlike fat meat and fish. There is one basic rule about dieting – if your body gets used to the reduced input of calories and you do not lose weight, you must increase your physical activity in order to make it spend more of its energy reserves. It is a known issue with diets that after a week or two, your body gets used to the decreased input of calories and it adapts to it by spending its reserves in a more economical way. Well, this is how we are programmed genetically in order to be able to survive when there is shortage of food but if you are on a slimming diet, you might not be very happy with this genetic programming. One of the worst moments in dieting is when you have just finished your diet and try to return to your normal eating habits. Most often, this results in a quick restoration of the lost pounds and if you are not careful enough, you might even gain more weight! There is only one solution – constantly watch your input calories and never go to extremes!
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