Now is not the time to try miraculous diets designed to help us easily and quickly lose weight. Time to permanently change your eating habits, learn to eat properly and stop believing in ancient myths about nutrition: about detox, “useful” Paleolithic diet and uncontrolled starvation.
To lose weight and to improve the quality of the body can be healthy, varied, balanced diet, tailored by a professional nutritionist and followed by an active and healthy lifestyle. So you can learn how to maintain your weight, and improve health, quality of life, prevent many diseases and strengthen the immune system. No “miraculous diets” and “magic” products do not exist. The real miracle will be if your body is not from them will not be affected. In this article, we will dispel the myths about diets and weight loss.
1. Detox diet: does it weight loss and cleansing the body of toxins?
For many years, we are told that it is necessary to cleanse the body of toxins by drinking a lot of smoothies, and fruit and vegetable cocktails. Of course, increased consumption of fruits and vegetables is helpful and is one of the pillars of a balanced and healthy diet. Nevertheless, it is impossible to compensate for concessions in food and overeating for days or even weeks of consumption of smoothies and juices. Definitely not. Full transition to smoothies can harm your health. First, because usually they contain a lot of sugar (natural, but still sugar). Thus, they violate our diet and does not help us to lose weight.
In addition, the abuse of smoothies in addition to sugar in the body and increases the level of other substances such as oxalic acid, which is contained in green vegetables, excess of which can cause kidney stones. Salad with spinach (100-150 g of leaves of spinach) is not the same as smoothie made from 1 kg of spinach. Don’t we need to clean our kidneys and liver, they can do it themselves. We can only help them in this, taking a balanced diet.
The moral: to improve the diet you can drink cocktails from fruits and vegetables with the pulp and fiber. To drink they need to “detox” and if you really like them, enter them into your balanced diet, leading a healthy lifestyle without alcohol, but with daily exercise.
2. Does weight loss short sleep?
For many years it is known that people who sleep less and skip the restorative phase of sleep often gain weight. Thus, contrary to popular belief, lack of sleep makes us fat. The reason for that are our genes. This is due to the fact that people who sleep less than 7 hours, or work nights, activates a gene called “Period”, which is associated with obesity and risk of cardiovascular disease. Also, if you sleep a little, you’ll be more likely to snack, consume more junk food, which diet will be more difficult. This gene is responsible for the schedule of sleep and seasonal mood swings.
In the European study entitled “HELENA” found that in children and adolescents the link between obesity and lack of sleep even higher.
There are four reasons for the lack of good sleep causes weight gain:
— First, from lack of sleep, we have increased appetite, because the more we sleep, the more the hormone leptin, which suppresses hunger; therefore, the lack of sleep you will eat more junk food.
— Second, it produces more ghrelin — the hormone which has the opposite effect: it increases our appetite.
On the other hand, insomnia can be caused by so-called “night eating syndrome”, when instead of sleeping, we go to the kitchen and open the refrigerator.
And finally, when the lack of sleep you will spend less energy. Not enough sleep, you will reduce their physical activity and will give preference to a cozy, sofa or chair, and not exercises.
In a word: the early bird catches “helps the diet.”
3. So if a diet, the stone age?
One of the latest trends of healthy food is the Paleolithic diet based on the consumption of large quantities of fruits, vegetables, lean meat, fish and nuts. It implies a rejection of dairy products, legumes, cereals, ultra-processed foods, sugar and alcohol. In theory the diet sounds appealing, but in practice it is not applicable today, because in the stone age was not a modern disease — the life expectancy did not exceed 35 years, which they simply did not have the opportunity to get sick.
It is obvious that reducing consumption of ultra-processed products high in sugar, salt, unhealthy fats, refined flour and additives useful for the body, with harmful eliminate from the diet of whole grains and legumes. Fortunately for us, on this diet already had to suffer the people of the Paleolithic.
4. Do I need to exclude nuts from the diet to lose weight?
This is another myth, as the reasonable consumption of raw nuts helps to lower weight gain. If you consume fresh fruits, moderate consumption of nuts fills the body with calories, fiber, good fats, antioxidants, vitamins and high quality protein.
5. Is it worth it to replace conventional sugar cane?
Which sugar is better? Unfortunately, no brown sugar, no cane sugar, no panel not have health properties.
Cane sugar: sugar, which is simply obtained from the cane, since there is sugar produced from sugar beets (which is not better or worse).
Brown sugar can be integral or not. By itself, the brown sugar is refined white cane sugar to which molasses is added, giving it a special color. Integral brown sugar is also produced from cane, but it is not refining.
Panela is unrefined juice of sugar cane. Although it contains more nutrients and minerals than non-integral white or brown sugar, it is not a useful replacement. Panela 90% consists of sugar, non-integral brown sugar is 98%. So the few nutrients that are contained in the panel, we can obtain, for example, from fruits, while respecting a healthy and balanced diet and not leaning on sugar.
