January 2008
You are currently browsing the articles from The Enhancement Blog written in the month of January 2008.
Sugar seems to be addictive to a certain degree. The human body learns fast that sugar means energy and that a lot of energy running through the system translates into a good overall mood. Unfortunately, the good mood lasts just as long as the amount of sugar in your blood stays above a certain level. Once the amount of sugar drops below that particular level, the mood changes and the body starts craving the next sugar fix that will make everything look good once more. In this respect, sugar seems to operate just like any other psychoactive substance or like adrenaline. You can learn to get high on all these substances.
The Sugar Addicts- Diet focuses on breaking the addiction to sugar in order to prevent the mood swings that prompt the addict to reach out for one more sugary treat. These mood swings are hard to resist and the promise of the next fix is so tempting that many people have no idea they-re hooked on something that is not healthy. Truth be known, most addicts don-t want to face reality and understand the truth about their addiction and many people hooked on sugar or adrenalin have absolutely no idea that they-re using a substance to prop up their moods.
This diet is largely based on the Glycemic Index approach because its purpose is to weed out the sugary foods and replace them with foods belonging to a lower Glycemic Index that release their sugar content slowly into the bloodstream and do not trigger the rush. The basic idea is to identify hidden sugar in the foods you eat. Many people don-t know that it-s not just sweets or soft drinks that contain sugar, but also a lot of sauces, dips, yogurts and ready-to-eat foods have enough sugar in them to cause the mood swings.
It-s pretty easy to figure that this diet is more of a lifestyle choice than a proper diet. Of course you will lose weight by avoiding the foods rich in sugar, but we cannot be sure if this is the best way to go for a committed user. If you want to lose a certain number of pounds in a certain number of weeks, then you-re probably better off choosing another eating plan because nobody knows how fast you can lose weight under this one. Still, as a long-term maintenance solution, this eating plan is a good idea, especially for those who are used to eating a lot of sweets and are afraid that all those lost pounds will come back.
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Written by on January 31st, 2008 with no comments.
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The Traffic Light Diet relies on what may probably be the best-known color code around to teach the user which foods should be avoided and which should be consumed in greater proportions. This diet focuses on cutting down the amount of calories contained in the daily food, instead of carbohydrates. Nothing new here, for that matter- a lot of diets are based on low-calorie foods. The cabbage soup diet, the Cambridge diet or the Ann Collins 14-day Diet come to mind when discussing this issue.
According to the Traffic Light principle, the foods are split into three categories. Red Light foods are high-calorie foods which contain few nutrients and should be avoided. Yellow Light foods are high in calories, but also high in nutrients, which makes them good to have around in moderate quantities. Green Light foods, of course, have plenty of nutrients for only a low amount of calories.
The basic idea is to eat as much Green Light food as you like, eat some Yellow Light foods and only touch Red Light foods once in a while, when the urge becomes unbearable. The less Red Light foods you eat, the more successful your weight loss process is going to be. We all know that sticking to a diet is hard, but if you really want to lose weight, then there are ways of motivating yourself and going through the whole diet. Not to mention that Red Light foods are not banned outright, but accepted in small amounts. This means that, yes, it-s OK to have some cake once in a while.
The list of Green Light foods includes vegetables, fruits, fish (white meat only), seafood, yogurt and low-fat milk. Yellow Light foods are potatoes, cheese (the low-fat version), oily fish, lean meat, bread and cereals (high-fiber), pasta, rice, seeds, nuts, beans and poultry. Red Light foods are everything else. Buying the book describing the diet will get you some helpful 7-day eating plans grouped according to lifestyles and information on portion sizes for many of the foods listed in the three categories. There-s also a large section of answers to frequent questions, recipes and exercising advice.
The best thing about this diet is the fact that it-s easy to understand and also easy to follow. It-s not based on any kind of complex reasoning that requires the help of a trained professional every step of the way and it-s not based on foods that no store from your neighborhood has ever thought to market. If you manage to stick to the diet-s principles you can expect to lose at least 1 pound a week, which means that you will probably shed the actual fat and not the water stored in your body. Don-t overdo it, though, because trying for 2 pounds a week can prove to be a major health risk.
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This one is more of a power diet, in the sense that you can only pull it off with a lot of willpower. The short-term results are bound to be spectacular, but as always, there is no guarantee about the long-term ones. Some diets are very strict on which foods are allowed and which are not, while others focus on achieving a balance between dieting and exercise. The Ultimate New York Body Plan is an attempt to push both the dieting and exercising to the limit. Calorie consumption is kept at a minimum, while fat burning is maximized through a lengthy program of exercises.
The two-week plan is built around losing some 1,500 - 2,000 calories per day. There are five meals per day which consist of egg white omelettes, lean meat (fish, chicken and turkey), vegetables and salad. Believe it or not, these are the only foods you are allowed to eat under this diet. No alcohol, no bread, no rice, no dairy products, no fruits. It-s a tough program and recommended only to those who are sure they can stick to this gruelling experience. The meal plan is supplemented by two protein shakes per day, which is helping your general health, but not your craving for food.
And if the strict dieting is not enough, you are also going to enjoy 45 minutes of cardio-vascular exercise and 45 minutes of cardio-sculpting exercise. That-s apt to be a bit rough on those not used to such intense workout. Some people can barely motivate themselves to work out half an hour per day, which is why this diet is rather ambitious to set the mandatory time limit at an hour and a half. I-m not sure that many people are able to stick to this, but I guess that if you really like this diet, then you can soldier on for two weeks.
As you can see this diet is not for the faint of heart and definitely not for the casual dieter. It takes a lot of willpower to refrain from quitting on the third day or so. People who haven-t exercised in years and have quite some weight to loose should not attempt the 90-minute work out, because it-s simply too much all of a sudden for them. Also, this diet is more of a quick fix because the weight lost during the two weeks will come right back as soon as you-re back on regular food.
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Well, it seems that people who cannot come up with an original idea, can at least think of a trendy name containing the eye-catching and product selling letter -X- and maybe even a reference to the popular X-Files series. I know that the X-Files series is now ancient history, but so are the glory days of the Atkins diet and of many other low carbs diets. However, this doesn-t mean that low-carbs diets have stopped working. You just have to be very careful when choosing one, because you might end up depriving yourself of vital minerals or vitamins.
So, what else is it to this X-Factor Diet beside the rather out of place use of the letter X? Well, not much. The same old idea that cutting off the carbs will help bring blood sugar levels under control and reduce the amount of insulin released into the cardiovascular system. This will, of course, prompt the body to start burning up the energy stored as fat in order to make up for the difference in energy levels. By controlling insulin levels, the user can prevent or even treat the condition known as Syndrome X (hence the book title) or insulin resistance, which diminishes the effect of insulin on fat and promotes obesity.
The diet features two programs to choose from, depending on how much fat you-re planning to shed, but both of them are basically the same low-carbs, high-protein diet. The biggest difference between the X-Factor and Atkins is the fact that X-Factor avoids the fried foods and butter promoted by Atkins and focuses instead on healthier fats obtained from lean meat, chicken, eggs and fish. Bread, pasta, wholegrains, rice, beans and most fruit and vegetables are out. However, the Insulin Balance eating plan allows a bit more vegetables and fruits than the Ketogenics plan.
Following the stricter plan women can expect to shed between 4 and 12 pounds in the first two weeks, followed by 1 to 2 pounds later on. Men are likely to lose between 8 and 16 pounds during the first phase of the diet. Overall, this diet is a little better than the Atkins diet, but still not very healthy for users. Healthy eating requires you to split the intake of calories between carbs (50 percent), fat (35 percent) and protein (15 percent). A diet that replaces carbs with proteins is likely to mean trouble later on, especially since no studies have managed to prove that low-carbs diets are better than low-calorie diets.
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The celebrity diet par excellence. It-s trendy to be in the Zone and it-s nice to be in the company of stars, to go through what they have gone. The Zone is also a nice sounding name, good for all kinds of marketing purposes. One of the things that have made this diet a success among celebrities is the fact that a lot of diet food delivery companies have included Zone foods in their menus. Those who can afford this kind of expenses are probably glad that they don-t have to go through the whole shopping and cooking experience.
The Zone Diet is built around the classic mix of low-far foods, such as chicken and fish, low-fat cheese, small amounts of fruits and vegetables and some olive oil. The Zone itself is a fancy term for achieving a state of hormonal balance (especially in insulin and glucagon) that allows the body to expend the energy intake in an efficient manner and to avoid storing calories as fat. Therefore, dieters are encouraged to eat a lot of non-starchy raw vegetables, a small amount of protein, a smaller amount of carbohydrates and enough monosaturated oils to keep the feeling of hunger away.
The good side of the diet is the restriction of refined carbohydrates, which are low in nutrition, and the focus on low-starch vegetables and fruits. Nevertheless, the American Heart Association does not recommend the Zone Diet because of the lack of essential nutrients, high-protein content and the general lack of information about its long-term effects. Since the diet is quite low on the daily intake of calories, it does not seem to be designed for the long term, but rather as a quick fix. Exercising is pretty much out of the question with such a low amount of calories.
Another problem that dieters are bound to face, except for those who pay for food deliveries, is that meals have to be calculated to include the exact amount of fat, protein and carbohydrates required by the diet. This is not always easy for the average dieter and it has every chance of becoming a bigger problem over extended periods of time. Also, dieters have traditionally found it hard to stay on a diet that is very low in carbohydrates because the feeling of hunger is almost always present.
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Written by on January 31st, 2008 with no comments.
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