Posts Tagged ‘Diets’
Volumetrics Diet: Fill Up To Lose Weight
Volumetrics is a diet plan developed by nutritionist Barbara Rolls, PhD, with one aim in mind - fill you up with food that is low in calories but high in volume (volumetrics! get it!?). She explains the Volumetrics diet in a 2000 book titled The Volumetrics Weight-Control Plan and then in 2005 with The Volumetrics Eating Plan.
First, who is Dr. Rolls? She’s a professor nutrition, the director of the Laboratory for the Study of Human Ingestive Behavior at Penn State University, and author of over 200 research articles. She’s not some random Joe Schmoe with a crazy plan and a dream of riches. Her plan is based on her empirical research and I think it has some merits.
So, how does it work? The plan revolves around the concept of energy density - that is the number of calories in a specified amount of food. The denser the food, the less of it you should eat. High density foods include cookies, chips, crackers, oils, nuts, chocolate and candy. Low densite foods include non-starch vegetables, low fat milk - stuff with a lot of water content. Vegetables are 80-95% water, so the idea is that you “fill up” on low energy density foods to quell that hunger urge.
It’s not a particularly innovative diet, in that it’s not some blockbuster straight out of left field idea; it’s stuff nutritionists have been saying this entire time. Personally, I’m going to integrate more vegetables into our meals. I’m a huge fan of broccoli and recently we learned that spinach was remarkably good for you so we’ll be having more of those in the future.
Subscribe to the comments for this postLow Carb Diet Is Best!
Which is best? Low carbs? Low fat? Or the Mediterranean diet chock full of healthy fats, fruits, and veggies? Turns out that conventional wisdom, where lower fat is always better, doesn’t always win out and the latest study shows that low carbs is actually the biggest winner. This was a story featured on ABCNews and one I caught on World News Tonight.
The Study: Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA put 322 obese subjects through one of three diets. The three were the ones just described, a low far, a low carb, and a Mediterranean diet. They had the subjects participate for two years and found that the low carb dieters lost the most weight, 12 lb., and the Mediterranean dieters scored second place with an average of 10 lb. Low fat dieters trimmed seven pounds in two years.
There’s more to it so check out the story on ABCNews.
High Protein, Low Carbohydrate Diets
If you’ve ever heard of the Atkins diet then you’re familiar with one of the most popular high protein, low carbohydrate diets. The idea behind high protein and low carbohydrate diets is that you get approximately 30-50% of your calories from proteins, which is much higher than what the American Heart Association, the National Cholesterol Education Program, and the American Cancer Society recommends. The logic of a high protein, low carb diet is that by consuming less carbohydrates, you put your body into a different metabolic state in which you consume fat for fuel. This state is known as ketosis, named after ketones, the carbon fragments created after breaking down fat and what the body consumes.
Your body typically consume carbohydrates for fuel and only turns to fat stores whenever you’ve run out of carbohydrates. My limiting the consumption of carbs, you skip the carb burning stage and go immediately into consuming fat.
There are significant risks to diets like the Atkins diet that aren’t widely discussed. Weight loss is certainly one of the benefits for you run the risk of problems such as kidney failure, high cholesterol, osteoporosis, kidney stones, cancer, nausea and bad breath.
(Photo by size8jeans)
Weekly Roundup: Diets & Pushups Are Popular
The man who told me about 100 pushups in the first place is also joining the 100 push up challenge. A few others are joining the craze as well, we’ll all be ripped in six weeks.
Elsewhere in the fitness world, there’s been a deluge of posts about diets. Fat Man Unleased unleashed a post on the 4 physical laws of dieting while Lazy Man was concerned about the safety and effectiveness of diet pills. Not to be outdone, Weight Ladder gave 3 tips on how to avoid diet stress.
Finally, NCN shares a recent trip to the dentist and some basic dental hygiene tips.
