Over the last decades, health and fitness has become an increasing concern for most of us. Some people crave a killer body and the attention that comes with it. Others want the perfect abs, a tighter bottom, or bulging biceps. The result of this movement has been a proliferation of gyms, health centers, spas, and personal trainers.
Ads for exercise equipment, weight loss products, and star-sponsored fitness routines dominate television, and it's hard not to think you're the only one out there who isn't working on your body. In fact, the perfect body is one part of a healthy, quality life.
Being truly healthy requires a healthy lifestyle and a proper, balanced diet. Diet for fitness provides the nutrition and energy we need to restore tired muscles and maintain a positive productive energy level. Think of the diet approaches - high-carb, low-fat, all-protein, sugar-free, all-chocolate, Scarsdale, Atkins, South Beach. There is no shortage of great- sounding fad diets out there.
If you pay attention to advertisements and special programs that focus on dieting and weight loss programs, you may not know where to turn for dependable, honest facts about nutrition and health. In fact, most fad diets don't work, and they sure don't support your health. So, what can you do to find out what's best, and most healthy, for you?
In reality, there are two basic diet approaches: high-carb diets and high-fat diets. High-carb diets focus on eating lots of carbohydrate-rich foods, and high-fat diets endorse fat-rich foods. High-carb diets use burn the glycogen in your liver and muscles. This glucose complex provides quick energy that you use in anaerobic exercises.
Fats are the richest source of calories, containing more than twice as much calorie value than either carbohydrates or proteins. When metabolizing carbohydrates, the human body burns 24 calories, yet it only takes three calories to burn the same amount of fat.
So, which one is best? Neither. Each diet approach yields results, as long as you stick to one type. You can adopt a high-carb, low-fat diet or a low-carb, high-fat diet. Just don't try both at the same time unless you want to gain weight.
But diets shouldn't be just about losing fat. A healthy balanced diet maintains a healthy weight and avoids weight gains. Successful weight loss can only be realized when the daily diet reflects lifestyle, individual food preferences, unique physical needs, and feeling satisfied with what you eat. There's really only one diet that will work for you. That's the diet that helps you stay fit, feeling healthy and satisfied with who you are. And that diet is unique to you.
When you diet for fitness, there are three things to remember: moderation, variation, and balance. Plan your meal schedule so that you don't get too full or too hungry at any time of day. This may mean three me als, five meals, or one meal. It depends your schedule and your physical needs.
Moderation means eating when you need to and eating the amount that satisfies without adding calories your body will only store as fat. Balance means selecting a healthy diversity - the basic food groups. It means getting the proper amounts of proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and fiber to keep your body functioning at its highest potential. Variation means giving yourself enough choice to keep interested in the foods you eat. Eating the same things all the time is not only boring, it's unhealthy. Having a salad one time and chicken the next will assure you get both the nutrition and the diversity you need.
The bottom line is that your important decision isn't what diet program will work. It's about what diet program will work to keep YOU fit and healthy. It doesn't mean going on a fad diet for a few weeks or months and then going back to your old habits. It means adopting a well-balanced, nutritious diet in combination with regular exercise and a healthy lifestyle and sticking to it - for life!
One last word of advice: experiment. Try new foods to keep your diet interesting and nutritious. Try new recipes to get a new take on the familiar. Who knows? You might even learn to love spinach!