Health diet, or what else you should know

The words diet and menu are mostly associated with drastic rules, numerous sacrifices, eating unpalatable dishes and washing them down with still water. To this many will be added hard workouts, which at the very beginning discourage them from taking up the fight for a better figure, but also for fitness.

What is a healthy weight loss diet?

Nowadays, we don’t have to buy a cookbook to explore recipes for diet meals. Sometimes it is enough to read specialist magazines or reliable websites on the Internet. This method can work well when you want to lose a few extra pounds. In the case of being very overweight or obese, it is best to choose the diet individually – a dietician or doctor can help us. So before we start preparing dishes recommended by well-known or lesser-known celebrities, it is worth consulting an expert. A healthy diet should not be just a temporary process to achieve your desired body weight.

To avoid the yo-yo effect, maintain a slim figure and stay healthy and fit, diet should become a daily eating habit and lifestyle element. It’s worth considering introducing more vegetables and fruits into your diet on a permanent basis – you can get inspiration from websites with vegan and vegetarian recipes. A flexitarian diet is very fashionable right now, which consists of eating primarily plant-based products and limiting meat and dairy products to a minimum. Thanks to this, you can eat healthy every day, without denying yourself, for example, your favorite hamburger once in a while. Recently, the so-called intermittent fasting has also been very popular.

People who choose this type of nutrition eat whatever they want for 8 hours of the day, and fast for the remaining 16 hours of the day – they drink only water and other beverages that do not contain any calories. Such a diet in some cases may prove to be an effective method of weight reduction. A popular and reasonable solution is also to follow the Mediterranean diet, i.e. eating in the style of the inhabitants of Italy, Spain, Greece or Portugal. This type of menu includes eating plenty of fish, vegetables, fruits, nuts, olive oil and whole grains. With this diet, you can not only lose weight, but also improve your health.

Healthy diet – what not to eat during a weight loss diet?

Among the foods with a high caloric density that should be avoided during a weight loss diet we find:

• sweets and high-calorie cakes;
• meat and meat products that contain a large amount of fat and harmful substances;
• highly processed foods.

These weight loss diets are worth avoiding

Deceived by the promise of quick results, we often decide on radical solutions. Very low-calorie diets or diets that exclude many ingredients can be considered as such. When someone promises you 10 kg less in a week or 20 in a month, a red light should go off in your head.

What diets to avoid?

• Copenhagen diet – this diet provides a specific menu for 13 days, which should be followed without any deviations. During the day, three low-calorie meals are eaten at designated times. A daily menu provides only from 200 to a maximum of 900 calories! This is well below the daily energy requirement of an adult. Unfortunately, the Copenhagen diet is poor in vitamins, minerals and complex carbohydrates. It effectively helps to get rid of kilograms, but it can also cause a lot of side effects, including a quick yo-yo effect.
• Protein diet (Dukan) – such a diet has been proven to be harmful to the liver and kidneys, and yet many people still decide to follow it. All types of protein diets are, of course, based on consuming large amounts of protein, while limiting carbohydrates and fats. The most popular among them is the Dukan diet, which consists of four phases. In the first one, only protein products are eaten, in the second one vegetables are added to it, in the third one small amounts of carbohydrates and fats, and in the fourth there is a moment of stabilization, when we get used to the new menu. Such a diet is effective and leads to rapid weight loss. However, the truth is that few people are able to endure long weeks in this kind of diet regime. The weakening of the body and nutritional monotony lead to the fact that we have an even greater desire for the so-called „forbidden” products. In this case, you can also expect a quick yo-yo effect.
• Monodiets – i.e. all kinds of cabbage, potato or apple diets. Such diets involve taking one product for a long time – in different forms. They do not require a large financial outlay and are easy to prepare – perhaps that is why they are quite popular. Unfortunately, they obviously have more cons than pros. Such a way of eating not only causes rapid fatigue, but also does not provide all the nutrients needed for functioning. Of course, following a monodiet will cause you to lose weight, but unfortunately it is also easy to lead to anemia and other health problems in the process. After this type of diet, the yo-yo effect often appears.