Mediterranean Diet
People who eat a traditional Mediterranean diet, such as Greek or Italian foods, have a 30 percent lower risk of dying from cardiovascular heart problems. They also have a 50 percent lower chance of being killed by coronary heart disease.
This is the finding of a 10 year study by Monash University, in Melbourne, Australia, which was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in August 2007.
The 10 year study examined the dietary habits and lifestyles of around 10,000 Australians living in and around Melbourne, Victoria.
Greek food and Italian food is popular in Australian capital cities, which have large numbers of people who emigrated Down Under after the second world war.
Mediterranean food involves people eating lots of fruit, vegetables and fish, a moderate intake of wine and a low consumption of animal products. They take very little red meat.
The most popular ingredients in these warm European cuisines include plenty of garlic, onion, cucumbers, capsicum, salad greens, olives and olive oil, beans and other legumes. They also enjoy lashings of tomatoes, feta cheese, ricotta cheese and watermelon.
Favorite meats in the Mediterranean diet include steamed fish and boiled chicken. Other popular Mediterranean seafood includes, shellfish, cuttlefish (calamari) and octopus. These are all very low-fat sources of protein.
The Mediterranean diet is a rich source of antioxidants, Omega-3 fatty acids and mono-unsaturated fats.
Now remember, food control is only part of your fitness plan. You’re also going to need to increase your exercise and change your day to day habits.
Atkins Diet
The Atkins Diet is one of the most popular low carbohydrate diets available today. It was developed by an American physician, Dr Robert Atkins, during the 1960s, and was soon turned into a nationally-franchised dieting business because of its success in effectively creating weight loss.
Doctor Atkins argues that Western eating habits have two main unrecognized factors. He suggests that:
1. Obesity is caused by eating refined carbohydrates, particularly sugar, flour, and high-fructose corn syrups; and
2. Saturated fat is much overrated as a nutritional problem… Only trans fats need to be avoided (i.e. artificially processed fats, such as those made from hydrogenated oils.)
Dr Robert Atkins believes that its this big increase in refined carbohydrates which has caused the gigantic rise in metabolic disorders since the early 1900s, when farming became mechanised and when big businesses began to take over the production of our staple foods.
Atkins says we have been wrong to obsess on dietary fat as being bad, because this has only increased the proportion of insulin-inducing foods left in our diet… And that has made the obesity epidemic far worse.
Since it is a lo-carb diet, the Atkins Diet helps you to lose weight through restricting your intake of sugars and refined carbohydrates. The Atkins food plan is particularly strict at the beginning so that it quickly induces ketosis to burn fat. It is quite normal to feel lethargic, to have headaches and to experience bad breath while you are going through ketosis, but that’s actually good because it means you are losing weight rapidly.
Once the initial rapid weight loss has been achieved, the Atkins method switches you to a more moderate eating plan where you continue to lose weight, but at a more relaxed pace. You will feel better at this stage, and should be pleased with the number of pounds (or kilos) that you’ve shed already. You continue to burn away the fat bit by bit until you reach your desired weight.
Once you are at your ideal weight, as determined by a physician or other health professional, then you switch from a weight loss diet to a maintenance diet. This ongoing Atkins maintenance food plan is designed to supply all the nutrients your body needs to operate at maximum efficiency, and at the same time, it eliminates the highly-processed carbs and sugars that bring on food cravings.
For a quick detox and fast weight loss, I’d recommend the no sugar no flour diet.
Pritikin Diet
The Pritikin Diet was invented by nutritionist Nathan Pritikin, and is a low fat but high carbohydrate diet.
The Pritikin food plan focuses on eating unprocessed natural foods such as fruits and vegetables, and minimally processed foods like brown rice, lean meat and seafood. Nathan Pritikin’s diet also recommends that you eat starchy vegetables including potatoes and yams (sweet potatoes).This was revolutionary since many other diets would prohibit them. So that makes the Pritikin Diet a hi-carb diet.
The Pritikin low fat diet plan also makes use of legume vegetables in the menu such as beans, which are eaten for their protein in many parts of the world, in other words as a meat substitute.
In India, the Middle East and parts of South America, millions of people are vegetarian (or mainly so) and get their protein from beans, lentils (dhal) or chickpeas. Some vegetarians this way for religious reasons, and others because they cannot afford to buy meat or fish. When you’re poor, even a meal of scrawny chicken is a luxury reserved for special occasions.
The Pritikin diet principle calls for a low-density, high-bulk diet. This is because your stomach expects to feel “full” after a meal. Yet it cannot tell if the bulk of the food you’ve just eaten comes from fat, protein, carbohydrates or anything else. But fat has more calories in it for its bulk than most other foods, so when you eat a lot of fat you ingest far more calories than you need… and your body is often unable to burn it off again. So all this unused energy (calories or kilojoules) gets stored in your body as FAT.
But please understand that fat on its own is not bad for you. Indeed it is a necessary part of your diet. Trappers and hunters in Canada and the arctic regions in the 1900s commonly had nothing to eat but the rabbits they could trap or shoot. They ate well, but the diet often killed these pioneers because bunnies are virtually fat-free. You’ve got to have some fat or oil in your diet or you die.
The Pritikin health program also calls for lots of exercise every day, including at least 30 minutes of brisk walking or other aerobic exercise. It recommends weight training two or three times each week, and that you perform simple stretching exercise every single day.
Nutrition experts at several top research institutions, including UCLA, found the Pritikin Program effectively prevented many major diseases that are rife in our affluent, modern society. The Pritikin diet strongly reduced occurrences of type 2 diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and obesity in the people who stayed with the Pritikin program.
The Pritikin diet was found to lower people’s blood sugar levels and normalize their blood pressure. It helped them to shed excess body weight and improve their cholesterol levels much better than cholesterol-lowering drugs which had been prescribed by doctors.
So there’s no doubt the Pritikin diet is effective in helping you shed the flab – and helping you to keep it off, as well.
Next, I’ll show you the famous Atkins Diet plan.