Diet And Health: How To Get The Best Of Both

Every day there is discussion about the best way to have good health and the best diet to eat. High protein diets were the rage a few years ago, and people were told to eat tons of protein, including fatty bacon and red meats but no carbohydrates at all. While people did lose weight on these diets, the long-term effect on their overall health is just now starting to be seen.

During those high-fat, high-protein diets, people were noting how grumpy they were, how sluggish they felt and how much they felt as if their head was in some kind of a fog. Well, of course they felt that way-the carbohydrates that they were not eating at all are actually needed by the body for a number of reasons:

- The brain only accepts and uses energy derived from carbohydrates to function properly

- Carbs are one of the easiest energy sources on the entire body

- Carbs may influence the production of many of the feel good hormones in the body

Getting a Better Amount of Protein in the Healthy Diet

Fad diets are a bad idea not only for your weight but for your overall health as well. The debate over whether or not yo-yo dieting harms your physical well being is an ongoing one with some doctors saying that losing and gaining weight over and over can lead to problems with your heart, lungs and other organs while other doctors say there is no permanent damage done. Of course, you do not need to have a medical expert tell you the damage that rapid weight loss, especially when it is large amounts, can do to your skin- stretch marks are more common during rapid weight changes because the skin is damaged in the process. For the most part, fad diets do not work, at least not permanently and in many cases, not safely. Sticking to a healthy and well balanced diet is a much better, much safer idea.

For most people, the right amount of calories can be determined by looking at their height, weight and amount of activity, but there are always some exceptions to these rules. Anyone who has serious health concerns such as heart disease, kidney disease, diabetes, or pregnant women should never start a new diet without discussing its safety with their doctor.

Before you can tell how much protein you need in your diet, you will need to figure out how many calories that you need overall. The problem with people who are trying to lose weight is that they will automatically eliminate some of the foods that they actually need and will try to lower their daily caloric intake far too low. Once the human body starts getting more than a few days of really low calories, it will panic and start thinking that it is starving to death and will shut the metabolism down completely. Because you are no longer burning food for energy, you are not going to lose weight, even with the low amount of calories that are going in. For some people, this will become a cue to simply stop the diet completely while for others, it will simply mean that they are not working hard enough, and they will lower the amount of food that they are eating even further. The problem is not the amount of work they are doing. It is not about how much food they are eating at this point, it is purely about the metabolism.