3 Mistakes when Buying a Diet Plan Online

Deciding to lose weight, and you search for a diet plan to buy online? Before going anywhere, read this article first.

Do not start searching before you define the goal of your diet. If you start searching blindly, you will be excited by will written messages, telling you that you will lose specified amount of pounds in the next, month, week, or 3 days! but what then?


You suffer the impact of your extra weight on your health and on your shape. You should know that gaining excess weight is a mark that your metabolism and your life style are on different tracks.

To prevent a wrong message that may penetrate your subconscious, you should avoid these mistakes:




1- Not recognizing the principles of weight loss

The classic view of calories is a bit changed now to consider source of calories rather than their number, in other words "not all calories are created equal". The balance of calories-in and calories-out is still applicable, but calories from food that builds muscles is different from calories
from food that help store fat.


The source of calories effect is obvious when the metabolism is changed, for example; in the growth stage the source of calories does not matter that much, since all the body activities are directed to building, but when growth has stoped, there is no gross building and any extra energy is stored as fat, and among the factors that facilitate this process are food types.


You have to change your eating habits to cope with your new metabolism pattern. To lose any excess deposited fat, you should change types of food you eat without restrictions of its amount.



2- Not Knowing how to maintain your optimal Weight

Be assured that any diet plan will shed pounds of your weight, the first days or weeks you use them. There are many ways to do that. Nevertheless, the problem which faces dieters is the maintenance of the acquired weight.

Most of the diet programs adopt strange ways to force your body to lose weight. They either starve your body, ban whole categories of food, introduce foreign materials that affect your metabolism, or put your body on an unsatisfying style of tasteless foods, or strenuous exercise, or both.

Your diet plan should let you eat your favorite way keeping you full and satisfied. It may discriminate some foods but should not restrict your whole life.



3- Not sneaking Your diet Plan

A diet designer should let you taste how his plan looks like. He should have been brought you something new as a new diet, and you should know what is this new diet about.

Testimonials are not enough because as said earlier, every diet plan will reduce weight for sometime. You should ensure that the concept will cause a permanent weight loss. An audio-visual support is better, but at least you should know something from inside the program.

If you want to know the exact principles of choosing diet program online you can visit The Diet Solution Basics

South Beach Diet Aid

This is your aid for evaluating South Beach Diet, if your are feeling you need some hints or tips on how to form your own overview.

South Beach Diet is founded by a cardiologist - Dr Agatston - who has designed a diet for patients with heart diseases, but they lost significant amounts of weight as a side effect pf this diet. Dr Agatston describes it as your plan to eat the right carbs and the right fats to lose weight and protect your heart.

Cutting Carbs and Ketosis :
It is based on the same theory underlying the Atkins diet but with some modifications, i.e. Ketosis, in which we force the body to maintain blood glucose - the energy store of the brain -, by synthesizing glucose inside the body from fat and protein stores, rather than waiting for external supply which is arbitrarily determined by appetite and sateity feeling.
Ketosis occurs when the blood glucose levels fall down the normal levelwithout external supply of glucose. to induce ketosis, you should cut out all carbswith high glycemic index - that pours high glucose amounts in the blood quickly - leading to increased blood glucose concentration.
South Beach Diet severely restricts carbs during the first 2 weeks, before it gradually re-introduce those carbs with low glycemic index. It also recommends unsaturated fats in place of saturated fats.

South Beach diet breaks the vicious circle of carbs--> Insulin--> hunger--> carbs, by allowing foods with low glycemic index such as pasta, pulses, and porridge, and these slowly release glucose into the blood, providing a steady supply of energy and you feel satisfied for longer time rather than carving carbs with high glycemic index which release more Insulin that forces you to carving more carbs and so on.This is the first modification of Atkins' which completely restricts carbs.

FATS : they should be mentioned by Dr Agatston as a cardiologist, thus he replaces saturates with monounsaturates such as olive oil and nuts.

THE PLAN is divided into 3 phases which starts with banning most carbs except low glycemic vegs such as Broccoli and Cabbage, and the focus is on eating lean meat, chicken, fish, eggs, low fat cheese, some nuts and olive oil, the second stage allows low glycemic carbs including most fruits, whole grain cereals, and pasta , and the third and the last phase allows a larger variety of foods to stay on for life. The phases are based on a combined time and weight loss schedule.The full details of the plan are better given by the South Beach Diet people themselves.
South Beach Diet claims the result is that you can lose 8- 13 lb in the first 2 weeks, and once you enter the second phase you can expect to lose 1-2 lb/week.

THE PROS :

# The diet takes the heart health in consideration, you can eat a lot of delicious foods if you limit saturated fats and trans fats.

# No major groups of food are eliminated.
* You can 'de-junk' your diet and cut down on carb rich foods ( white bread, sugary cereals, and sweets).

# No starving or fasting involved:
* You can have more energy and do not get tired if you start eating the low glycemic index way.
* You won't get hungry after you stop eating sugars,white flower,high glycemic index white rice, and potatoes.
* You can stop craving for high sugar foods after you stop eating them.

# Dieter compliance:
* The diet follows the basic principles of healthy eating and, the list of the low glycemic index foods involves a wide variety of nutrients.
* You can twist between its phases, cheat a little and a few weeks back on phase one.
* You can avoid phase 1, and start on phase 2, and get one of the better diets available.
* You get a true new life style through South Beach Diet.

THE CONS :
# The first 2 weeks of extreme carb restriction requires serious willpower and may leave you weak and wobbly.
# You will not get your recommended fruit and veg each day, and you miss out on some vitamins,minerals, and fibers.
# South beach diet does not fully cater for people who do not or cannot eat dairy. It bans soy in phase 1.
# Most of the 8-13 lb lost in phase 1 are likely to be water loss ( No one explains how).
# Some experts do not necessarily agree that you should completely ban all high glycemic foods, because glycemic index changes considerably when foods are eaten together.
# Most nutrition experts are less happy with the recommended weight loss. They see that you lose no more than 2 lb/week for good health, and this contradicts the large weight loss in the first 2 weeks.
# Most nutrition and fitness experts believe it is impossible to lose weight from just one part of your body, arguing losing weight specifically from midriff.
# Few experts argue with a diet that recommends cutting down on processed carbs and swapping foods rich in saturates for those containing mono-unsaturated fats.


The bottom line that South Beach Diet is a good alternative if you can escape its cons and stick to its pros.

Atkins Diet Review

Atkins diet was the first scientifically supported diet plan to adopt low carb food as its technique for losing weight. It has created a buzz about it , equal to or increasing the demand of the diet itself.
You have heard that starting your first day with Atkins diet with eggs and bacon, snacks on
chunks of cheese, top coffee with cream, a luxury not found on the low fat diet for example,
yet you should give up other delicious varieties that contains carbohydrates like cake, biscuits,
chocolate, pasta, rice, potatoes, crisps, even fruits and some veg in the primary stages.
Atkins diet has been tried by millions of people and has generated a non-stop debate that consumed calories that may be even more than calories lost by using the diet itself.

The Theory behind Atkins Diet :
Atkins diet is a high protein, low carbohydrate diet designed by the late Dr. R.Atkins. It is based on what is known in physiology as KETOSIS, that is, when you cut out carbohydrates, you direct the body to regulate the blood glucose ( the glucose store of the brain ), thus your body pours glucose into the blood to keep its concentration in a steady state. The body forms this glucose from amino acids and glycerol split from the broken down proteins and fats respectively.

The fatty acids split from fats are utilized for energy production, and they produce much higher amounts of calories than glucose. The whole process is hormones regulated and there is no
shortage of calories, consequently you do not need to fill in the spaces and eat extra amounts
of foods that are not needed and only determined by your appetite.

The Plan of Atkins Diet :
We can arbitrarily divide Atkins diet plan into 2 big stages which are subdivided into 2 phases
each.
The first stage is concerned with teaching and training your body to endowingly generate its
needed glucose in a regular controlled pattern that keeps it in a steady concentration. This
stage involves 2 phases:

1-Induction (20 g/day Carbohydrate Intake) :
It lasts for at least 2 weeks although it can be continued for much longer if you can bear.
This is the stage of changing your nutritional habits largely, so you should avoid carb rich foods
as : biscuits-cakes-chocolate-crisps-fizzy drinks-croissants-pastry, and ditch : bread-potatoes-rice-pasta-milk-fruits and most vegs from menu, so that your carb intake is limited to 20 g/day.
( most of us eat around 250g/day ). In the same time you can eat unlimited amounts of red meat, fish, chicken, cheese, eggs,mayonnaise, cream and butter.

2-Ongoing Weight Loss ( 25-50 g/day Carbohydrates ) :
During this phase you take the amount of carbohydrates that allows you to lose between 1-3
lb / week, so you are allowed to increase your carb intake by 5 g / day for a week at a time,
until you find your critical carbohydrate level for losing weight.
You are allowed introduce a few more veggies, fruits , nuts . and seeds. Bread , potatoes , rice
pasta and breakfast cereals are still off the list.

* The second stage of Atkins diet is concerned with preparing your body for the new lifestyle
and is subdivided into 2 phases:
3- Premaintenance phase (Increase carb intake by 10 g/day for a week at atime) :
It begins when you have 5-10 lb left to lose, it prepares your body for the final maintenance phase. The idea is to slow down your weight loss to no more than 1 lb a week in an effort to prepare your body for the final phase , weight maintenance.
By now , you can start to include tiny amounts of starchy foods such as porridge, bread and
pasta, you can eat 40 g cooked brown rice or 30 g cooked pasta.

4- Life Maintenance Phase ( Less than 90 g/day carb for most people ) :
This is the final stage. It aims at helping you maintain your weight. You can increase carb intake to no more than 90 g / day ( around one third the rest of us eat daily).

The Result of Atkins Diet :
Dr. Atkins claims you can expect to lose 6-10 lb in the first 2 weeks of induction, which should slow down to 1-3 lb a week once you enter the Ongoing weight loss phase.

Advantages of Atkins Diet :
1- The main advantage of Atkins diet is that people can lose considerable amounts of weight, quite quickly and this can be very motivating to continue a weight loss plan.
2- Atkins diet offers people many foods that are liked by many people such as red meat, high fat butter, cream , cheese and mayonaise, consequently this is attractive to people who are
reluctant to start a weight loss plan. In fact, Atkins diet is one of the best choices to start
weight loss.
3- Atkins diet focuses on digestible carbohydrates ( equivalent to the carb content present in the label on food packaging). These carbohydrates are of high glycemic index and high glycemic load which have negative impact on our health.
If Atkins diet is modulated to contain high fiber content fruits and vegs, it would be a good choice for cutting down carb intake.

Disadvantages of Atkins Diet :
1- Many low-carb diets are expensive, and many of them lack other nutrients your body needs.
They are also often higher in fat and/or calories than the standard product.
Many of them are less suitable option if you try another plan like counting calories.
2- Some unpleasant Side Effects may accompany Atkins diet like tiredness, weakness, dizziness, insomnia, and nausea. Lack of high fiber content also may lead to constipation.
3- Long term impact of Atkins diet on health :
Although there are no documented clinical findings, yet many experts enumerate some draw-backs which they see are seriously dagerous , these are :

- High intake of fats particularly the saturates may increase the risk of heart diseases.
- The unbalanced nature of Atkins diet may lead to nutritional deficincies which can cause
health problems in later life like:
* Poor intake of Calcium present in dairy products, fruits and vegs, may increase the risk of
osteoporosis.
* Poor intake of antioxidants found in fruits and vegs have been linked to a host of health problems like heart diseases, cancer, pre-mature aging and cataracts.
* High intake of protein may cause kidney problems or weak bones.

4- Many foods are banned , the diet can get very boring with the result that many people
give up after a short period.
5- Many experts , believe that Atkins diet fails to teach people about the basic principles of a balanced, healthy diet, which science proves - every day - can help us keep healthy.
6- Atkins diet is unsuitable for vegetarians who cannot ban nuts, seeds , beans and mant veggies in the early stages.
7- Atkins diet lack essential sugars.
8- Atkins diet recommendations are sometimes hard to follow, for example, Dr.Atkins suggest that you can eat unlimited amounts of calorie packed butter, mayo and cream, and these foods are typically served with others that are banned , e.g.
- Butter is traditionally spread on bread or served with potatoes and both are off limits, leaving few choices for eating more butter.

Finally to be fair with Atkins diet, one can see that it is a good choice to start a weight loss
plan with, then you can shift to counting calories, and I have a a personal experience about cutting carbohydrates and counting calories away from Atkins diet, I may tell that story
one day.