by Heather Wilgar

The Women's Post, Page 19

It is that time of year again! New Year's resolutions are virtually synonymous with health and diet in this day and age, but with so much focus and attention on this topic, it is hard to keep everything straight. Low Fat foods? Low carbs?. No carbs?. what is the best plan to follow, and how do we know?

Most diets, including high-protein diets, only create deprivation, hunger, and fatigue. Every week at the grocery check-out counter you will see hundreds of magazines touting the newest diet, usually developed by some Hollywood celebrity. These diets always fail, because they are nutritionally unbalanced, making them impossible to stick to. Let?s take a look at how some of the popular diets stack up against one another.

The Atkins Diet is the most extreme example of the high-protein diets and is based on protein gluttony without eating any realistic amount of carbohydrates. It is a diet that is totally unbalanced. Millions of people have tried this diet before, have lost weight, and then regained the weight back and more. This is because much of the initial weight loss is due to increased urination to eliminate abnormal ketone bodies. However, weight gain is almost guaranteed because continual ketosis (a state in which your body burns fat as fuel) actually adapts your fat cells to become ?fat magnets.? There are also some nasty long-term health risks, such as kidney stones, osteoporosis, high cholesterol, and heart disease, associated with continued ketosis.

The Carbohydrate Addicts Diet is a diet program that defies logic. Assuming someone is a carbohydrate addict, why would they reward themselves with a high-carbohydrate meal once a day that feeds their addiction? This program requires the dieter to eat two high-protein meals and one high-carbohydrate meal. This is like going to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and telling everyone they can go to a bar for one hour each day to reward themselves for being sober most of the day.

The Ornish Diet is a very low-fat diet that is the complete opposite of the Atkins Diet. On this program the primary goal is to consume as little fat as possible, and eat lots of carbohydrates. With the recent low carb craze, this diet seems to have lost momentum or maybe it could be the fact that a small group of cardiovascular patients who followed this diet for five years suffered twice as many fatal heart attacks than a similar control group who followed a less restrictive diet. There are forms of dietary fat that are essential to a healthy diet, which is absent when following this diet plan.

The Zone Diet is based on a caloric breakdown whereby 40% of your calorie intake comes from low glycemic load carbohydrates (fruits and vegetables), 30% lean protein, and 30% dietary fat. The premise is to eat several times throughout the day (three meals, two snacks) all with the same protein/carb/fat combination. The idea is that eating food prepared this way will keep blood sugar and insulin levels in check. No sugar highs or lows will be experienced throughout the day because insulin levels are in the proper zone. When excess calories are eaten, regardless of whether they come from carbohydrate, protein, or fat, they will turn to glucose and store in the body as fat, but eating food in this combination ensures that the body is continually burning everything that is being ingested, so there are no excess calories being stored on the body.

Additionally, it is considered a lower calorie diet, so when the body requires further fuel to get through the day it draws on the fat that is already stored, and thus weight loss, or actually, fat loss occurs. The Zone is more of a life-long food management system than a diet because there is nothing extreme about it, and it provides a tremendous amount of flexibility in food choice and includes all the food categories.

The truth is plain and simple: Exercise and healthy eating leads to more energy, less stress, more mental clarity and flexibility. A well balanced diet rich with fruits and vegetables and low fat proteins is the most sensible way to go. There is a simple way to prepare a well balanced meal called the hand/eye method, which maintains that protein intake should be no bigger than the size of your palm, fruits and vegetables should be equal to two handfuls. Fats should be no more than the tip of your thumb. Try it and I guarantee you?ll look and feel better in 2005.

******** Heather Wilgar is the president and founder of Diet Delivery Canada Inc. specializing in the delivery of healthy meals to homes. She can be reached at 416-487-DIET (3438) or online at: www.dietdelivery.ca

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