4 Diet Myths

There's nothing better we can do for ourselves than to become healthy through proper nutrition, but most people don't even come close to eating a healthy well-balanced diet.

As a matter of fact, many people who think they're eating healthy really are victims of our society's 4 diet myths. These myths are propagated by fad diets that advise cutting out essential nutrients that your body needs to function properly.

Myth 1:
Certain Food Groups Should Be Eliminated

Many fad diets emphasize the elimination of certain food groups or eating primarily only one or two food groups. Your body needs a balanced diet that supplies you with the diverse nutrients that will keep you healthy. Your body needs water, vitamins, protein, fat, minerals, energy (carbohydrates), fiber, and oxygen. Eating a diet rich in fruits, veggies, grains, nuts, and seeds will help you rebuild your immune system, which will in turn help you to stay healthy.

Myth 2:
You Have To Eat Meat To Get Enough Protein

Your body needs 30 grams of protein each meal. Meat and dairy products are very high in sodium and fat. Fruits and vegetables have at least one gram of protein in them.

Myth 3:
Eliminate Fat From Your Diet

Your body needs 50 grams of fat each day. You don't want to eliminate fat completely from your diet because it helps your joints and muscles work smoothly.

Myth 4:
You Have To Go Hungry To Lose Weight
The average woman should never eat less than 1,200 calories/day and the average man should never eat less than 1,800 calories per day.

If you feed your body natural foods, then you'll have no need to go hungry. You can pretty much eat all the fresh fruits and vegetables you want, and it will not adversely affect your weight. In order to maximize the nutritional value of your foods eat them in as natural a state as possible. Avoid chemicals, especially those found in water. Fluoride, for example, is a poison.

Although as a treatment for teeth it can prevent cavities, it does no good to ingest it, but rather acts as a poison in your body.

Conclusion
By getting back to nature and the foods your body was designed to run on, you can stay fit, maintain an optimal weight and build up your immune system so that you live a longer, more energetic life.

How to Avoid Common Diet Myths

Lots of people give diet advice but few actually know what they're talking about. A consequence of this is that a lot of myths and falsehoods get passed around and eventually, they become fact. Here are some of the most popular ones you should avoid if you want to lose weight.

Creating a calorie deficit is a must for weight loss. When you start burning more calories than you take in through exercise and proper diet, your body will begin to use its fat stores for energy which will cause weight loss. Taking this idea to an extreme and starving yourself should result in a whole bunch of weight loss, right? Wrong. If you cut your calories too drastically, your body's metabolism will slow down to conserve energy which will result in a slower than expected weight loss.

Although they are slowly fading out of the mainstream, low carb diets are still popular and people still think they are the cure to obesity. Low carb diets work because when you cut carbohydrates out of your diet, there's a lot of food you can't eat. Because of this, you end up eating less. If you eat 2,000 calories on a low carb diet or 2,000 calories on a low everything diet, you'll lose the same amount of weight.

There are some crazy health people out there that say no amount of junk food can be healthy. This isn't the case at all. In moderation, any food can and should be enjoyed. A major function of food is to make us happy and anyone who says that it shouldn't has probably never tasted a good hamburger or slice of pizza. A food becomes unhealthy when you start eating way too much of it. One or two slices of pizza isn't a problem. A whole pizza in one sitting is. If your diet is high in healthy foods such as fruits, vegetables, fish, whole wheats, beans and nuts, having a piece of chocolate or a can of soda every once in awhile won't hurt you.

If you're looking around for diets that work, you might have found a few detox diets. These diets basically starve your body in attempt to flush all the "toxins" out. In the process, you're also supposed to lose weight. These diets do nothing to flush out any toxins in your body. They aren't very good at helping you lose large amounts of weight either. When you stop eating, and drink nothing but their special "juice" for a few days, toxins will actually start to build up in your body. Even if these did work, what happens when you start eating normally again? Do the toxins come back? How often do you have to detox? There's nothing healthy about starving yourself or limiting your intake to special "juice".

There are lots of people out there saying dieting simply doesn't work. They are right and wrong. If you're looking for a temporary fix, dieting probably won't work for you. The weight will come back if you go back to your old ways. Saying that all diets are worthless is wrong. It doesn't matter how you think of it, cutting calories will eventually lead to weight loss. If thinking about it as a lifestyle change rather than a diet helps you, then do it.