Tag: Diet Books

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Weight Loss Exercise

History of the Paleo Diet

The history of the Paleo Diet is also referred to as the Paleolithic Diet or Caveman Diet. This concept of eating natural, raw food is not new when it comes to diet books. Back in the 1970′s this theory was discussed by Walter Voegtlin in his book, The Stone Age Diet. His idea was similar to the popular Atkins diet of that time period.

This caveman theory was based on the fact that people were hunters and simply ate what they found in the wild. This included meats, fruits and vegetables. Animals were not domesticated at that time and so there was no milk, butter and cheese available. Only natural foods in their raw state, this is the basis of the Paleo Diet today.

The Paleo or Caveman concept was overshadowed by popular diets such as the South Beach Diet, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers and other dieting methods.

The History of the Paleo Diet

The modern history of the Paleo diet began in 2005 with a new book published by Loren Cordain’s The Paleo Diet for Athletes: A Nutritional Formula for Peak Athletic Performance. This book caught the attention of many professional athletes who began to follow the methods described. They began publicly endorsing the concepts and the Paleo Diet came to the forefront of the diet revolution.

Today the Paleo Diet is based upon what we assume cavemen ate. This is based solely upon research done by scientists. Cavemen ate any animal which they could hunt and they foraged for fruits and vegetables. These three things became the staples of their diet.

If you do any research on the Paleo diet you will find that there are different versions available. Some versions state that you must only eat grass fed animals while other versions allow you to have dairy products. One thing that you must take into account is that our farming methods have evolved over the centuries.

Humans raise their animals to be eaten not to be hunted. They are fed chemicals and nutrients to improve the quality of the meat. Milk and other foods are pasteurized so they stay fresh longer. So it can be difficult to truly eat a Paleo Diet.

However you can eat on the notion of the Paleo Diet and include whatever foods you are comfortable eating. If you want to include milk and cheese do so, but remember that they contain fat and are high in calories.

Foods that might have been available to cavemen were potatoes, hard grains and certain legumes. The reason why these foods were not eaten was because they did not know how to cook them. Most of these foods are inedible in their raw state and so were never used.

As cavemen evolved it can be assumed that these foods were added to their diet. The problem with eating foods like potatoes and grains is that they are not a food that man is accustomed to eating. In fact grains can be linked to a whole slew of health issues including digestive problems. Scientists have shown that whole grains are extremely difficult to digest and many people have sensitivities to this food group.

Looking back over history and watching how diets changed, the introduction of not just potatoes and grains, but sugars and oils have caused major health problems. As these foods became available more instances of medical concerns were seen. People began to become overweight, they started having heart attacks and strokes. Even cancer could possibly be linked to the introduction of unnatural foods into our diets.

Another consideration is that cavemen would eat different foods depending upon where in the world they lived. Certain fruits and vegetables would only be available in certain areas. So knowing exclusively what you should and should not eat on the Paleo Diet can be a little challenging.

So What Should You Eat on the Paleo Diet?

History of the Paleo Diet

How strictly you follow the Paleo Diet concept is up to you. It would be best to choose as many natural and organic raw foods as possible. If you want to add foods like potatoes and milk then do so carefully. These foods tend to have lots of carbohydrates and calories in them. It may be best to lose weight first and then slowly incorporate them back into your diet.

Health wise you can’t go wrong with eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables along with lean protein choices. You should see and feel improvements in your health very quickly.

There are many Paleo Diet books and resources available so choose one that fits into your way of thinking and stick with it. Remember if it works and you are comfortable with it then use it. You can see from the the history of the Paleo Diet that these ideas are not new but are very natural

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Weight Loss Exercise

And My Favorite Diet Plan? Weight Watchers


OK I get to finally talk about which plan I support for weight control. Over the years I have seen all the diets come and go. My dad years back did the Mayo Clinic diet, my wife joined Jenny Craig, and I have a bookshelf full of books starting with Susan Powter’s ‘Stop The Insanity’, Atkins Diet books, the GI Diet, Dr Phil’s Diet books and even more that I can even think of without standing in front of the bookshelf.

So what’s my favorite? It’s Weight Watchers. My wife joined Weight Watchers a few years back before getting pregnant with our second and I was more than a little skeptical. Over the years we learned so much about our diets, exercise and the role that weights cardio, carbs, fats, protein, and water played in our lives that I was pretty sure we could do it ourselves. Lastly I was nervous about how my wife Michelle was going to do as Jenny Craig had not gone well and she was talking about gastro banding surgery¦.this is something that I am not a big fan of at all unless as a last resort.

Well I was apparently wrong. Weight Watchers has a very simple system for weight loss by giving a point value to every food based on the calories, fat and fiber. Weight Watchers also has people mark down in a journal all of the fats and water taken in as well as number of servings of fruit. One really important factor to me is that weight watchers does not ban certain foods but instead preaches portion control and the ideals of healthy eating. This means that you will not get bored of the food and stray off of your diet, in fact it never feels like a diet to us but just a responsible way of eating.

Although the weight loss that Michelle has experienced is not like on The Biggest Loser TV show it is consistent and it has been really great to see the results. One of the really great things about Weight Watchers is the support that they give, Michelle goes to a meeting every Saturday morning where she weighs in and then a leader talks about holiday eating or motivation or what to replace problem goods with and at the end of the meeting Michele will often come home with a great new recipe.

Our family is definitely a Weight Watchers family with her watching the way she eats every day but more importantly we have great meals that are easy to make and not to strict and the whole family eats the same meal for dinner instead of us having a diet meal and three regular meals.

There are Weight Watchers meetings in practically every city in North America and there is great online support as well with an extensive website and numerous internet message boards.


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General Weight Loss Tips

Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle – A Closer Look at the New Ebook Diet Craze Burn the Fat Feed the Muscl

We’re all familiar with the hyped up new books and diet systems that come out regularly, claiming they can show you a better way to achieve bodybuilding goals, weight loss, or just good overall physical fitness. Most of these are full of rehashed information that doesn’t really show us anything original that we haven’t seen or read about somewhere else before. But one book has stood out from the rest for a while now, Tom Venuto’s Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle.

Venuto is a bodybuilding and nutrition authority, who has studied this subject for over 20 years. His long list of certifications was really the only reason I gave his ebook a second look, and I think it lends some credibility to the methods he recommends in Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle.

This is a 340 page ebook, and these are the major areas that it covers about drastically reducing your own body fat percentage.

1. Permanent weight/fat loss. Yo-yo dieting is commonplace with almost all nontraditional diet and weight loss programs. People can have some sort of success with a program, then gain the weight all back within the next few weeks. Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle talks about some of his carefully studied methods to join that 5% that keeps the weight off permanently.

2. Drugs and supplements: My real disgust with this whole industry really started when I began to come across a lot of mainstream diet books in bookstores, and on bestseller lists, etc. that actually “recommended” their own brand of supplements. Some went so far as to print the website address where you could buy them on every page of the book! Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle is an all natural system, and the author explains why you’re most likely wasting your money on 97% of the supplements out there. There were supplements that I swore by before, but in reading Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle, I’ve been able to continue to get the results I want without them. This approach can potentially save you hundreds of dollars a month.

3. Metabolism. There’s a natural barrier to dieting and fat loss, where you can have some success and lose weight for a while, then it gets substantially more difficult to lose any more. They call this the “plateau. ” A lot of diets that consist of really minimal meals get you to the plateau quickly, and they slow down your metabolism to the point where it can be very difficult to continue losing weight or lose it again once you gain it back. Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle explains Tom’s system for speeding up your metabolism to where fat no longer just sits still. Your body continuously expends the fat as energy. This part I have honestly not seen anywhere else. And there’s a lot more to it than smaller meals, more often.

4. The right foods. There are good fats that are more or less essential to losing weight and burning excess fat. A lot of people take this the wrong way and see it as permission to eat a bunch of junk mixed in with their diet. There are very specific foods that this refers to, and Tom tells you exactly which ones. There are also lesser known methods for combining different types of foods to get the best results.

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