Weight control: 5 facts
* FACT N. 1
A healthy approach to weight loss and dieting should include a realistic combination of balanced diet and exercise.
The "set point" approach to weight loss is a popular theory. It says that the body has a "set" weight that it tries to maintain. Thanks to homeostasis, no matter how much or how little you diet, your body has a strong tendency to hover at that weight. Only by resetting your body's metabolism (say, by exercising regularly) can dieting really help you lose pounds for good.
* FACT N. 2
Monitoring nutritional intake has long been the recommendation of physicians and health professionals for weight loss and maintaining health.
Studies show that people who routinely track food consumption and exercise lose more weight and keep it off longer.
Calorie counter software is now available to help you keep track easily of both your food intake and your calorie expenditure through normal activity and exercise.
* FACT N. 3
Surveys of successful dieters have often found that many of them used organized programmes to lose weight.
Well-known, long-established organizations for weight loss can help through the support and advice that people give each other. They can work like a sort of self-help group, as well as having professional advisers for guidance.
The best weight loss organization in Britain is Weight Watchers UK .
More information on UK weight loss plans, including Weight Watchers UK is available here.
Many USA weight loss programmes are also available.
* FACT N. 4
Diets are a very controversial topic.
Diets are now very popular. It's not surprising, since the percentage of the population who is classified from overweight to obese is already large and still increasing in Western countries.
The appeal of diets is that they appear to be some kind of easy way out. Rather than working out how to change some of your deep-rooted habits, something which has now become part of your life, you have somebody else do all the thinking for you, and you just have to follow a series of pre-ordained steps: 1, 2, 3... Or so it seems.
A diet particularly unaccepted by doctors and by the scientific community at large is the Atkins Diet. Since its potential risks are proportional to its high popularity, we have focused on the dangers of the Atkins Diet.
Here you'll find advice on a common dieting problem.
* FACT N. 5
The secret to lose weight is not so much to cut down your total calorie intake, as to cut down the number of calories derived from fat in it.
That's because fats are the group of nutrients which is more likely to be stored as adipose tissue (love handles for you and me).
Here is some information in simple, digestible pills on fats metabolism & nutrition.
It's not all bad news, though. Some fats are bad, but some fats are good, most notably olive oil.
And here are a few easy tips to reduce fats in your diet.
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