The problem with the diets

I was born in the seventies so I was witness to way too many fitness trends and diets. When you are young you believe a lot of things. The older you get you accumulate experience from trying all that crap and failing so you become slightly wiser.

In my teenage years I was into sports so I was exercising two hours a day seven days a week and let me tell you, even that amount of exercise does not get you a six-pack. But I was fit and felt good. Once I finished university and got a job, things went slightly downhill. The weight started to fluctuate and I had to take some measures. Since I hate shopping with a vengeance I had to lose weight. I went for the first time to a gym and realized that I do not really like running on the treadmill. Feels unnatural. Or biking on a stationary bike which 90% of the time is bloody uncomfortable and you are not going anywhere. But it helped me lose a couple of kilo.

Then I went swimming twice a week and I loved it. Exercise felt good and it did its job for a while. Till it kicked me in the teeth.

What the trainers fail to tell you and probably do not know, considering they are all young and sport is what they do all day, is that you do not exercise when you are tired! And especially you do not wake up at the crack of dawn to exercise if you are not a morning person! Your body will not appreciate it and will put you down on your ass with the speed of light.

With all that done and failed I went to change my diet. Which I knew it is probably a load of crap since I had a former colleague who was eating salads all day and was seriously overweight.

Ten years later I may say I got wiser. I understood in time that the human body is like a machine. You feed it crap it will break. You do not exercise it will rust, or in human terms, your muscles will slowly disappear creating a new level of problems. We need muscles to support your bones and we need good food to have energy. Lose the muscles and your spine will bend, your back and feet will ache and you are in a new world of problems. Eat junk food and your liver and kidneys will quit on you faster than a 20-year-old dumps a broke septuagenarian.

There is a huge array of diets these days. From meat lover's Atkins to the vegans who hate everything animal related, gluten-free, dairy free and so on and so forth.

Thing is you need to have a basic idea on how your body works before you engage in a diet. If you have previous medical conditions you need to take them into consideration very carefully.

If you have high cholesterol, blood pressure, liver issues do not go into Atkins or Ketogenic diet.

If you are anemic don't go vegan unless you are suicidal.

If you lack vitamin D, meaning you work indoors 90% of your time, do not ditch dairy from your menu.

If you want to go gluten-free do not buy the gluten-free products, their labels are like a chemistry lesson, super unhealthy.

But if you don't have any medical conditions, there are still some basic rules that many of the diets ignore.

First, your body needs protein for fuel. Vegans will say this is bullshit and you can get protein from plants as well. Well, protein from plants is different from the one from meat and you need to eat a lot of broccoli or beans to compensate and your intestines will not love it at all. You will be so full of gas that you can fly to the moon. Plus beans have to be cooked in a certain way to diminish the lectins effect on your body which otherwise is pretty harmful long-term.

Meat is difficult to digest, therefore professional cooks even recommend to eat it only several times a week. Think it like this: a chicken or beef broth on a slow cooker (boil chicken for two hours and beef for 4 hours) is full with collagen and is considered the best remedy for a cold. It is comfort food and you can eat the soup, meat and vegetables. Fish is great, but you need to stay away from farmed fish. Tuna is filled with mercury and wild salmon while super healthy it is very expensive. So it is a tough choice. But it is not for nothing that pregnant women are recommended to watch super carefully what fish they eat and the only ones that have a go are herring, sardines, cod, trout and wild salmon.

Secondly, while eating a lot of vegetables and fruits is great, you need to eat what is in season. Do not eat strawberries in January, those are not strawberries. Eat from local trusted markets and cook your own food. Processed food is full of preservatives, sugar and salt and it will not help you lose weight but put a heavy burden on your liver.

Most importantly and probably the most difficult to do is cut the sugar and the fat out of your menu. Everybody whines and drags its feet at this one. While I do not eat fatty foods (or I thought I don't) I love sweets. But there is a trick to pull this off. Clean up your house. You have sweets inside, you will eat them. You have just fruits lying around, you have no other choice. And dark chocolate is a good substitute. Eat a couple of squares of 85% dark cocoa and see if you crave cocoa afterwards. Keep eating sweets and no diet in the world will help you.

There is a reason for removing fats and sugar. These are the most difficult things your body can digest. The story with trans fats like hydrogenated vegetable oils, margarine that are bad for you has a truth behind it. Your body  cannot break it down, it is not designed to do so. Eat a diet high in sugar and fats and slowly your liver will stop filtering them properly and dump them back into your body under the form of toxic blood. You will get gallstones, high cholesterol, diabetes and these are just a few. The top of the line is autoimmune disease, when your body turns against you. Right now there is no cure for that so kudos if you got it.

When my doctor recommended me a diet low in fats I was thinking fried stuff or meat. That was partially true. The fried stuff stands, but fatty products are chicken with skin, pork, fat fish (even if in olive oil, don't), all nuts and seeds, dairy and cheese with over 20% fat, any kind of oils and most processed foods. You can still eat some prosciutto that has the fat removed. But not every day.

And surprisingly this stuff works. It is a bitch to shop since you have to watch all labels, or you can simply go for raw products and cook it your own.

You need to exercise as well. Find something you like and do it a couple of minutes per day. Yoga, stretching, running, biking outside or on a stationary bike in front of the TV, swimming, whatever you feel like. And relax! Stress is a bitch on your body and no work-out will help you. Except combat exercises maybe.

Live long and prosper!