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Are You Overweight?
A Scientific Look at Fat
What Doesn't Work
How to Lose Weight
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Excuses Excuses
Nutrition
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What Doesn't Work
Most of us have tried the fad diets, the
miracle pills, the gadgets, the creams, and all the other junk they insist will
help us lose weight, but anyone who has tried them knows that they don't work
(at least not long term). Here's a list of weight loss programs that don't
work or are just too unhealthy to use:
- Phen/Fen: Lose weight then have
a stroke or a heart attack!
- Herbal Life and other pills like
it: First you need to know exactly what you are putting into your
body, and some of these products don't have the ingredients listed on the
labels. Some common ingredients of these products, such as ma huang,
can cause heart problems, high blood pressure, etc. as well as have bad
interactions with medications.
- Pyruvate: It reduces your
ability to gain weight. It does not help you lose weight.
- Chromium picolinate: There is
no scientific evidence (or personal evidence) to support that it actually
causes weight loss.
- Fat binders: Take a pill when
you eat something fatty. Problem: it doesn't bind to enough fat
to actually cause you to lose weight & it can cause vitamin
deficiencies.
- Patches: Plain and simple; they
just don't work.
- Magnet therapy: There is no
scientific evidence to support that it actually causes any weight loss.
- Apple cider vinegar: It's a
salad dressing, not a weight loss solution. It does not help you lose
weight no matter what the guy selling it tells you.
- Exercise pills: They contain
ephedrine, a stimulant. It's great if you want to stay up all night,
but it can also cause high blood pressure, heart attacks, and death!
Here's a healthy alternative; try actually exercising.
- Liposuction: It's only
cosmetic, and you only lose up to 7 lbs. You're body will quickly try
to replace the fat.
- Low carb. / high protein diets:
It causes vitamin deficiencies and is usually high in fat which can cause
heart disease. They're also often low in fiber which helps fill you up
and reduces your risk of illnesses like colon cancer. Besides, we need
carbs to metabolize fat effectively. The metabolic process it produces
causes the formation of ketones that cause fatigue, nausea, and fluid
loss. There are also reports that it can cause constipation.
Vegetarians can't do this diet at all.
- Low calorie diets and fasting:
When you restrict the number of calories you consume, your body thinks
you're starving, so it does everything it can to make sure that it doesn't
use precious calories. Thus, your metabolism slows down, and it become
more difficult to lose weight and easier to gain weight. Plus, you'll
probably have serious fatigue and find it difficult to concentrate.
Let's also not forget that you're going to be hungry all the time.
- Food combining: This is where
you eat certain foods with other foods so that they digest in a certain
order at different rates which is supposed to help you lose weight. It
doesn't work. Everything you eat, no matter what you try to combine it
with, will still get digested, and you'll still gain the same number of
calories that you would if you didn't combine the foods. Also,
sometimes this diet has you not combine foods that should be combined to
increase the absorption of nutrients, so some vitamin deficiencies can be
possible.
- Blood type diets: Whether you
are type A+ or O-, you're body will use the same digestion processes and
metabolic processes that everyone else does. This diet is just
absurd. It can also cause nutrient deficiencies because it eliminates
various food groups for different blood types.
- Cabbage soup diet: Man shall
not live by cabbage alone! This diet causes severe calorie reduction
and nutrient deficiencies.
- Grapefruit diet: Man shall not
live by grapefruit alone! Same thing as the cabbage soup diet.
Too much restriction on the calories and can cause deficiencies.
- Juice diets: Calorie
restriction, nutrient deficiencies, major hunger, and an overwhelming desire
to chew on anything you can get your hands on are the drawbacks of this
plan.
- Meal replacement drinks, bars,
cookies, etc.: Yes you'll lose weight! Unfortunately, the odds
of keeping it off are pathetic unless you actually plan on drinking those
nasty shakes or eating unappetizing meal bars for the rest of your
life. You will gain the weight back.
- Fruit diets: You're reducing
the amount of other food groups that you need, so naturally you're going to
have nutrient deficiencies. Plus, you'll probably have one bad case of
diarrhea.
The best way to lose weight is
slowly. Yes, we all know that we would much rather lose 10 pounds in 10
days or something of that nature, but you will probably gain it back and cause
yourself health problems in the process. Make sure that whatever program
you choose lets you eat from all of the food groups and won't starve you.
Plus it must include exercise because we cannot reach a healthy weight through
diet alone.
Sources:
http://www.weight.com/
http://www.ivillage.com/topics/fitness/dietplan/
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