Up to now, we've covered the basics of dieting, and now we get to the actual diets themselves. As you may recall, we enumerated the requisites for a good diet. They were:
* Obtain and continue a steady loss of weight. The ideal pace would be no more than 1% of your total body weight per week, though less than that figure would be acceptable. * Set no limit on the amount of food you may eat nor greatly restrict the number of calories you can consume, within reason. * Greatly reduce your appetite in a physiologically correct manner, and in doing so, eliminate hunger from your dietary lexicon. * Improve your metabolism to a point where counting calories would be unnecessary. At the same time, the regimen would improve your overall health profile. * Finally, and most importantly, when used in a maintenance mode, will keep the weight off.
After exhaustive research, my choice for the "ideal" weight reduction and control system is the Atkins diet. Yes, I know that the plan has been excoriated for all the years of its existence, but factually, there's none better. The main reason it has come under fire is because it flies in the face of conventional medical teaching. The diet (a misnomer in this case since this is more a novel dietary way of life) advocates more protein and fats with an extreme restriction of carbohydrates in the initial stage.
Robert C Atkins, M.D. maintains the hormone, insulin, is the great fat producer as well as the bodies greatest friend and enemy simultaneously. Insulin regulates the amount of blood sugar Glucose that courses through your body, giving you the energy to perform the normal tasks of life. (The normal range is 65 to 110 milligrams in 100 CC of blood.)
After a meal, particularly one with a large amount of carbs, the Pancreas produces insulin to process those carbs and keep the glucose level within the body's normal parameters. Insulin converts any excess of glucose into Glycogen, a starch, for storage in the liver and muscles. Glycogen is released for energy when the glucose level in the blood is low.
When there is an excess of glucose and the storage areas for Glycogen are filled, insulin transmutes the excess glucose to triglycerides, the main chemical constituent of Adipose Tissue; Fat! So much for carbohydrates.
Simple carbohydrates such as sugar, milk, fruit, honey and refined products like flour, rice, potato starches and others are readily absorbed into the system and converted to glucose. This creates a need for insulin to regulate the amount of glucose in the blood. The greater the quantity, the greater the amount of insulin needed for control, a cycle that builds on itself. Conversely, protein requires very little insulin for processing and fats require virtually none.
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