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Complete list of health & fitness articles What is a balanced diet for losing weight and good health? If you want to lose weight then knowing how many calories you eat and burn will be important. Here are some guidelines you can use. The total calories that you should be consuming depend on whether you are a women or a man. It depends on your body structure and your activity level. So you need to make some adjustment on the numbers I present. If you have been eating around 1800 calories per day you can slowly move your intake down to 1600. Work down from this level over a month's period to 1400 calories. Don't go below 1200 calories per day. Otherwise you can over stress your body. If you have just started out and are eating 2400 calories, decrease your calories to 2000 or 2100. If you don't lose weight in 2-3 weeks reduce your calories lower. Over a month's time you can move down to 1600 calories and see if you start to lose weight. If you do, stay at this level. It's not a good idea to make a drastic shift in your consumption of food since your body can react and get into a "starving mode." In this mode your body will store more fat making it difficult for you to lose weight. Remember not to eat junk food. When you eat quality food, it takes less food for you to become satisfied as compared to eating junk food. Protein, Carbohydrates, and Fat There are many ideas about what combination or percentages you should eat of the various nutrients - protein, carbohydrates, and fat. I don't believe that exact percentages exist, which will provide weight loss and good health for all individuals. Each one of you will require different percentages depending on your weight, health, body structure, emotional make-up and a variety of other conditions. For this reason some diet programs work with some people and not with others. One of best eating habit programs that will help you to lose weight is to eat: * quality protein * low glycemic carbohydrates * quality fats * high fiber * high water consumption Quality Protein - is essential for the body to survive. There 8 essential amino acids and 14 non-essential. Protein is used to regulate certain body processes by contributing to various chemical reactions and by creating a number of body chemicals. Eating excess protein results in an acid body, which favors disease. Protein eaten alone causes a 25% increase in your metabolism. When combined with fat and carbohydrates there is only a 10% increase. What this means is that eating more protein and less fat and carbohydrates gives you a boost in metabolism. It is recommended that around 30% - 35% of your eating habits consist of protein. Carbohydrates - consist of simple and complex sugars. When carbohydrates are eaten they are broken down into sucrose, which is readily accepted by your cells. Sucrose is converted into energy in your cells. If you eat a lot of high glycemic carbohydrates, your bloodstream becomes overwhelm with sucrose. The excess sucrose in your cells will be converted to fat and stored. Because most people have been adding weight eating high glycemic carbohydrates, it best to change your eating habits and decrease your intake of these carbohydrates. In general people have been eating 80% high glycemic foods (HighGF) and 20% low glycemic foods (LowGF.) You need to change that to 80% LowGF and 20% HighGF. This means that you should limit eating foods like potatoes, bread, corn, pasta, muffins, and any flour products. HighGF encourages the storage of fat since the more sucrose you have in your blood, the more sucrose is escorted into your cells by insulin. You need to concentrate on foods, which are LowGF. Many of these foods are vegetables with small amounts of carbohydrates and high fiber content. LowGF discourages the storage of fat since less sucrose is in the blood and less is escorted into your cells. Quality Fats - which are eaten with your meals, prevent sugars from moving quickly into your blood stream. You need to eat more of the good fats. It's these fats that will help you lose weight. The good fats are omega 3, omega 6, and medium chain fatty acids, MCFA. Here is the breakdown on the quantity of each type of fat that you should be eating. These percentages are what you should be working towards so that fats provide you with good health and help you keep your weight down. * saturated fats 10% * polyunsaturated fats 20% * monounsaturated fats 60% There you have it, the numbers and percentages of protein, carbohydrates, and fats that give you a balanced diet so that you can lose weight.
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