9 Things to do while on a diet

1. Do not start doing the “Fad” diet of the moment - The risk is to not having the desired effects. Choose a fairly healthy diet and suitable to your food habits.
2. Do not believe to miracles - Don’t expect that your food change will transform your body in a few weeks or a few days. You can consider this period as a time when you can take care of yourself and your health.
3. Do not do too much exercise - Do not stress your body unless you are a professional athlete.
4. Do not skip meals - Some people think that dieting means skipping meals and thus lose weight by eating less calories possible. But this way of thinking is wrong, you are not on a diet to lose weight, but to gain a new way of eating, healthy and balanced.
5. Do not look at the balance every day - Don’t do it because it is almost impossible that your body loses weight every day, and you might find disappointing results and discouraged even before you begin.
6. Do not be influenced by humor - The outcome of the diet follows that of your emotions. You could fall in the “sadness trap” followed by a piece of cake only with the aim to make you feel better.
7. Do not reduce too much the number of calories - Reducing too drastically the amount of food is absolutely wrong because forces the body, which is suddenly lacking, to accumulate as many calories as possible.
8. Do not hesitate to ask for advice - Often when you want to lose weight you can receive wrong advices by “so called” experts committing serious errors for our health, so the advice is to seek “trusted advice“.
9. Do not be hyper critical with yourself - To better understand your eating habits try to write down a “Weight loss journal” about what you eat during the day, so it’s easier to analyze the results and make any changes to the program.

10 Healthy habits from the Mediterranean

1. Eat legumes
2. Eat lots of dark green leafy vegetables like spinach, rocket, endive, chicory and amaranth
3. Eat a range of coloured vegetables including tomatoes and capsicum
4. Use extra virgin olive oil
5. Include some fermented foods like yoghurt or feta cheese
6. Slow cook meats with vegetables, including tomato, garlic, onion and olive oil.
7. Eat fish and seafood
8. Be generous with herbs like oregano, rosemary, dill and mint
9. Snack on nuts and seeds like pumpkin seeds, roasted chickpeas, almonds, walnuts, as well as dried and fresh fruit.
10. Use vinegar as a flavouring for other dishes.

Read more:

• Ten healthy habits from the Mediterranean (eating frozen pizza doesn’t count), Theage.com.au
• Ten things to do while on a diet, Blog Dietetico

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If you were a caveman you could lower diabetes risks…but You live in a City and eat like a Mediterranean I’ve wrote some times ago, there are a lot of similarities with the Paleo diet and the Mediterranean diet.

They have the basis to eat:

• Fruits
• Vegetables
• Nuts
• Little meats
• Fish

A research proved that the simple diet of the caveman is the “best choice to control diabetes 2”.

The study was conduced on 2 groups of participants who followed the Paleo diet and the Med diet for 3 months had these results. The Med diet group had a much higher intake of grains and dairy products.

The blood sugar rise in response to carbohydrate intake was markedly lower after 12 weeks in the Paleolithic group (–26%), while it barely changed in the-Mediterranean group (–7%).  At the end of the study, all patients in the Paleolithic group had normal blood glucose.

Substances in grains and dairy products have been shown to interfere with the metabolism of carbohydrates and fat in various studies.

Ok Maybe the paleo diet is more indicated for people with Diabetes 2 but…could you eat lean meat, sushi everyday and drink crude milk?

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As I’ve wrote some weeks ago, on the net there is a lot of misinformation about low carbs diet. Yesterday I’ve read a new article from the Washington post about a new research about the heart risks of the Atkin’s diet.

The researches say that a low-carbohydrate diet may cause risks for heart disease. In fact, during a period of not weight loss the follower of this diet experienced an increasing of “bad” cholesterol (LDL).

What the researchers say

Dr. Michael Miller: Professor in the University of Maryland Medical Center and the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.

“A stabilizing Atkins diet is not the way to go”

Dr. Robert Bonow, immediate past president of the American Heart Association.

“With the Atkins diet, you do lose weight and experience a short-term beneficial effect on lipid parameters, but the concern would be long-term. Saturated fats are not good for heart health, and many people experience rebound weight gain which is not good.”

He also offers a summary of a nutritional checklist for health:

• Exercise
• Paying attention to calories
• Lots of fruits and vegetables
• Less saturated fat
• Milk products should be skim
• Fried foods are bad
• Omega-3 fatty acids are good

The Mediterranean diet not!

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Med diet pyramid increases your health

Here a list of the recent buzz I’ve found on the web this week…so let’s talk about:

General

• Is the Mediterranean diet really what we need?
• What is a Mediterranean pyramid diet?

Health effects

• Interview with world heart scan authority, Dr. John Rumberger
• How to fight Prostate Cancer and blindness
• Causes mortality after myocardial infarction

Foods

• More Omega-3s essential
• Diabetic Diets and Wine
• Lower Cholesterol by eating tomatoes
• Why You Should Make Extra Virgin Olive Oil Part of Your Diet
• Spinach and Eggs Can Help Your Vision

Cooking

• Some cooking advices on how to cook some Med foods

Not so good info…

• Greek diet fuels heart problems
• Binge Drinking On The Rise In Mediterranean Countries

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Recently I’ve read a post in this blog where the arguments are a series of articles about “Mediterranean diet helps….but not much“:

• Mediterranean diet and insulin sensitivity, lipid profile and blood pressure levels, in overweight and obese people - The researchers aimed to investigate if overweight and obese adults “close” to Mediterranean diet present better insulin, lipids profile and better pressure levels, compared to individuals close to a more Westernized diet

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If you have tried all type of diets and feel frustrated with your weight performances, then read this “easy to read” article where i compare all “real” effects and benefits of the most know diet plans.

Recently i follow some forums, news magazines and other social media on the web about what people think about the different types of diet.

So i decided to write this post to help you choose and compare the different diets and verify what is the best.

It’s amazing to see how much misinformation there is on the net.

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In this week I’ve read a research from the Science Daily, about a Swedish study of the Lund University on the effects of the Paleo diet.

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