Category: Dieting

Atkins and Diabetes

The Atkins diet principles lay the foundation for a healthy, more balanced way of eating than the standard American diet. Its emphasis is on using good carbohydrates in balance with adequate protein. This is in stark contrast to what most Americans eat on a daily basis. The average American eats lots of processed foods that have hidden sugars and highly processed carbohydrates. This has put most Americans on the road to diabetes and pre-diabetic conditions. What is sad is that diabetes has a predictable set of stages and that they can be easily recognized.

The road to diabetes has to do with something called the glycemic index. All carbohydrates are rated on this index with regards to the level of insulin reaction they produce. Foods that have a high glycemic index rating will cause your pancreas to release a lot of insulin to break down the amount of sugars and carbohydrates (which produce high amounts of glucose). The refined carbohydrates and sugars that make up the vast majority of the American diet rank very high on the glycemic index.

We are able to more readily digest these foods as children, because our bodies function more efficiently in our youth. There may have been side effects, like weight gain and mood swings, but they didn’t stand out. As we age, however, these symptoms begin to grow and become more prevalent. The nation-wide obesity epidemic is a result of high-carbohydrate diets and unstable blood sugar levels.

Many people who are overweight are also insulin resistant. Insulin resistance means that the insulin is not doing its job in removing glucose from the blood stream. The pancreas gets over worked and it releases massive amounts of insulin, sometimes 20 times more than the body actually needs. This results in the blood sugar dropping to extremely low levels. This sets off a chain reaction in the body that leads to a release of adrenaline to correct the blood sugar problem.

With age, blood sugar and insulin difficulties become more aggravated. The condition is called “hyperinsulinism” and is a precursor for type II diabetes. It is normally accompanied by high blood pressure and high triglycerides.

After years of using a high-carbohydrate diet, you will finally become fully diabetic. Insulin is the body’s primary fat creator and extra pounds usually accompany late onset diabetes. Pre-diabetic conditions, if not treated effectively, will lead to diabetes indefinitely.

However, there are easily identifiable warning signs to diabetes that appear early. Your family doctor can perform insulin level tests that will let you know if you are at risk for pre-diabetic conditions, and studies show that low-carb diets like Atkins can help. Controlling your blood sugar is one of the most effective methods to controlling pre-diabetic conditions.

The Atkins diet helps effectively control blood sugar. The combination of proteins, fats and good carbohydrates will keep your body satisfied without the roller coaster effect. Controlling carbohydrates in quantity as well as type will help limit the insulin spikes. This will let your pancreas work in the way that it was meant to be, and it will decrease the likelihood of your developing pre-diabetic conditions. It’s a vicious cycle that, if left unchecked, can lead to diabetes later in life. When the Atkins diet is followed effectively it produces stable blood sugar throughout the day and helps you stay off the road to diabetes.

Mayo Diet – Eat A Grapefruit Lose The Weight

The Mayo Diet is misnamed because it was not named for Minnesota’s famed Mayo Clinic. Still, the eating plan persists under this name. It continues to be popular. It is also known as the Grapefruit diet because that fruit is consumed at most meals. So, if you are wondering how the Mayo Diet works, this article will explain it.

The Mayo Diet is based around eating grapefruit, salads, and lean protein. It strictly restricts carbohydrates. You should follow the diet for 12 days and then take a 2 day break before beginning again.

A sample breakfast is two eggs, two slices of bacon, a cup of coffee and half of a grapefruit. Lunch might be salad with dressing, any kind of lean meat, and half of a grapefruit. Dinner is fish, any kind of non-starchy vegetable and half a grapefruit. Right before you go to bed, you can have 8 ounces of skim milk or tomato juice.

As you can see, the Mayo diet focuses on grapefruit. The theory is that grapefruit provides some “magical” dieting tool. This is nonsense. The reason that the diet works is that it is very low calorie (about 1000 calories a day) and that it eliminates almost all carbs. That means that you are losing water weight. If you don’t go back on it after your 2 day break, you are likely to gain all of the water weight.

Some of the principles of the Mayo diet include eating until you are full, but not beyond that point. You can have all the lean protein and fish you want, but don’t over eat.

Don’t skip meals! Also, you shouldn’t eliminate any of the foods on the diet including the bacon and the salads. It is said that the exact combination of foods on the diet is what helps you lose the fat.

Limit your caffeine intake to one cup of coffee in the morning. Caffeine affects the insulin balance that hinders the burning process.

When on the Mayo Diet, don’t eat between meals. The combination of food suggested should be sufficient so that you will not be hungry.

The diet completely eliminates sugar and starches. These are lipids and form fat. Ironically, fat doesn’t form fat. Instead, it helps burn it. You can even fry food in butter and use butter generously on vegetables and lose weight on this diet.

Do not eat desserts, bread, and white vegetables or sweet potatoes when on the Mayo Diet. It is alright to eat double or triple helpings of meat, salad, or vegetables, but NO CARBS. Eat until you are satisfied. The more you eat of the proper combination of food, the more you can lose.

It is typical to lose up to 10 pounds in 12 days on the first round of the Mayo Diet. On subsequent rounds, you may lose less, but you should still take off some significant weight.

Why Low Glycemic Foods?

Some currently popular eating plans like The Perricone Prescription, A Week in the Zone and The Protein Power Lifeplan recommend low glycemic foods.

The theory is that sugar and high glycemic carbs that rapidly convert to sugar trigger a release of insulin to control the level of sugar in the bloodstream. Excess sugar in the bloodstream is inflammatory and causes a cascade of free radical damage.

To explain how dangerous this is, Dr, Perricone points out that diabetics with poorly controlled blood sugar age one third faster than nondiabetics and are prone to kidney failure, blindness, heart attack and stroke.

So insulin comes to the rescue to clear the excess sugar from the bloodstream. And what do you suppose the insulin does with all this sugar? It stores it as fat. And worse yet, until the insulin sweeps up the excess sugar, it runs rampant throughout the body causing glycation and cross-linking of the body’s collagen.

The effect is visible on the skin, which becomes leathery and inflexible as we age. Though it can’t be seen, the same damage is taking place inside the body where it affects other vital organs including the kidneys, lungs and brain.

So far, so good. Nutritionists have recommended that people cut their consumption of sugar for decades. The surprise when one ranks sugars and carbs by their glycemic index, is that some foods we normally think of as healthy show up as being bad for you.

The glycemic index is a ranking from 1 to 100, with 100 indicating the increase in blood sugar from eating table sugar (or white bread in one scale). Whichever scale is used, the important thing is a rank ordering of a food’s effect on blood sugar.

The low glycemic food diets mentioned above have different cut off points. For example, Dr. Perricone’s 28-day program prohibits any foods that score above 50 on the glycemic scale. That leaves out such things as bananas, bagels, carrots, corn, potatoes, rice and watermelon.

You can read more about the glycemic index (GI) and view the whole table http://www.mendosa.com/gi.htm here. This site is authored by David Mendoza, a freelance medical writer and consultant specializing in diabetes. The site is a gold mine of information.

Mr. Mendoza points out that a food’s glycemic index tells you how rapidly a particular carb turns into sugar, but not how much of that carbohydrate is in a serving. In other words, it’s not just the quality of the carb, but also the quantity, that counts.
The version of glycemic index on his site (courtesy of Professor Jennie-Brand Miller of the University of Sydney) includes a column called glycemic load (GL) as well as a column of serving size in grams. A glycemic load of 20 or more is considered high; 11 to 19 is medium; and 10 or less is low.

Looking at this bigger picture, some of the “bad” carbs in low-glycemic food diets turn out to be not so bad. A 120g serving of watermelon has a horrible GI of 74 but a very low GL of 4. A medium banana (129g) has a bad GI of 51 but a medium GL of 13. An 80g serving of carrots has a borderline GI of 47 but a low GL of only 3. The same amount of corn has a GI of 47 but a low GL of 7.

On the other hand, some carb foods look bad whether you go by the GI or the GL. A 70g bagel has a high GI (72) as well as a high GL (25). A 150g serving of boiled white rice has a GI of 56 and a GL of 24. A medium baked potato (159g) has a high GI (60) and a marginal GL (18).

If you decide to concentrate on low-glycemic foods, I recommend you focus on a food’s glycemic load. Just be careful to adhere to the indicated serving sizes (or adjust the calculation accordingly), GL is a better measure of how much sugar in total is being poured into the bloodstream and the amount of sugar that will be stored as fat.

This article is for informational purposes only. It does not purport to offer medical advice.

Dieting Dilemma: When Life Gets in the Way

Life has a way of fouling up our the best laid plans. First you decide to keep your car cleaner, “I’ll wash it every Saturday morning.” Great, you have a plan. Saturday comes along and someone calls inviting you to go golfing. You think, “I was going to wash the car, but I’ll do it when I get back,” and off you go. Maybe you do wash the car later that day, but maybe you tell yourself, “I’ll wash it next Saturday. It really wasn’t that dirty.”
Next week Saturday comes along and someone invited you camping so you’re in the woods thinking, “Oh, well, I can’t wash the car from here, can I?”
Another Saturday rolls around and you’ve forgotten all about your car washing plan, so even though you’re not doing anything else you’re thinking, “I don’t really FEEL like washing the car right now. I’ll do it later,” and so it goes.
“Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.” — John Lennon
It happens to all of us. You join the gym and immediately get the flu. Sign up for a adult education class and you’re car breaks down on the first night. When you need to water the grass there’s no rain in sight, but wash the car and what happens? These examples aren’t meant to give you a pessimistic outlook but instead point out why persistence in the face of obstacles is what separates the haves from the have nots.
It’s not what happens but what you DO with what happens that matters.
The best approach is one-day-at-a-time, or even lesser intervals depending on what you are attempting to do. If you’re trying to quit smoking, you might want to take things half-an-hour at a time. With food or eating it can be one meal at a time, one hunger pang or craving at a time, or whatever interval works for you.
Choose your Time Interval then Make it Happen
If you say you’ll never do something again (smoke, overeat, over drink) it never lasts (you must build in the possibility of occasional lapse), but if you wake up in the morning and decide for that day, and only that day, that you will follow through with your plan, for just that one day, then it can and will happen. There’s a real rush of accomplishment when you wake up and realize that yesterday you did it; you accomplished what you set out to do. Each accomplishment make it just that much easier to decide again to follow-through and it gets easier and easier.
Let the successes build, and let the lapses pass. It takes practice to get proficient no matter what you are learning, so plan to persist. Small lapses aren’t failures, they are only lapses, and you then decided for the next time period. Doing this allows you to pre-plan when you know you’ll not stick to your eating plan, thereby making it okay on occasion to over indulge. Holidays, special occasions. People who maintain a healthy weight do this all the time without thinking. When you give yourself permission to indulge, it’s amazing how much less you’ll feel like indulging. Take away the forbidden fruit and it’s just an apple.

Super Healthy Diet Plan!

Get ready to lose 10 pounds! By paying attention to the amount of food you eat, eliminating unnecessary sugar and fat from your foods and making sure you include absolutely delicious meals and snacks to keep your taste buds happy. Use this easy-to-follow and super healthy diet plan to lose the first 10, the last 10, or any 10 in between! Because it’s a balanced and flexible program, you can stay on this diet as long as it takes.

 

Top Fast Secrets
• Keep track of everything you eat and drink. No need to estimate calories – just write down the type of food or beverage and the amount.
• Cut your fat intake in half, that means half as much margarine or butter on toast, vegetables and your muffin, half the mayonnaise on your sandwich, and half the oil in the pan when you saute foods. You get the idea!
• Limit the sugar treats to three times per week maximum.
• Include good sources of protein at meal, chicken, fish, legumes, peanut, cottage cheese, eggs or yogurt.
• Eat at least one meatless lunch and dinner each week to reduce fat, increase fiber, and get yourself into the habit of building meals around whole grains, beans and vegetables.
• If you’re not currently using skim milk, go down to the level of fat content in the milk you use. For example, if you currently use two percent, use only one percent. If you insist on whole milk, try two percent.
• Eat at least two servings of fresh fruit every day. Choose whatever type of fruit is in season.
• Instead of fruit juice for breakfast or snack, drink water. Add a slice of lemon or lime for zest.
• Include two servings of vegetables with lunch and dinner, for a total of at least four servings per day.
• Choose one to two servings of foods made from whole grains with every meal.
• Shut off the TV whenever you eat – that includes meals and snacks. Studies show that we automatically eat larger portions when we snack in front of the tube, and typically those foods are high in fat and sugar, which means excess calories!
• Choose calories you can chew – that means only calorie-free beverages (except for milk) Sodas are loaded with empty calories, and fruit juices provide less fiber and vitamins per calorie than the fruit they’re made from.
• Plan ahead for meals and snacks so you know exactly what you plan to eat. Last-minute choice tends to be higher in calories and lower in satisfaction.

 

DISCLAIMER: This information is not presented by a medical practitioner and is for educational and informational purposes only. The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read.
Since natural and/or dietary supplements are not FDA approved they must be accompanied by a two-part disclaimer on the product label: that the statement has not been evaluated by FDA and that the product is not intended to “diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.”