Women's section: Weight loss diet myths. By Vic Goyaram

Women's section: 

Weight loss diet myths, fallacies and getting your basics right

Researched and composed by Vic Goyaram 

Sweethearts, you don't have to eat just this! That's not called dieting

Does dieting mean starving?

For most people, the mere mention of the word "diet" conjures up images of terrible sacrifices, intense food restriction or outright famine. There are many misconceptions and myths about dieting that underlie the failure of most "diets". To start I want to highlight that a "diet" should not be some kind of crash course with the aim of achieving a certain weight. The diet should rather be considered as a change of lifestyle. If you do it this way you can keep your results permanently. This article attempts to shed light on some of the most common dieting mistakes and provides some clues on how to fix them .

"Focus on a lifestyle that will last forever"

The most common dieting mistakes

1. Significantly reducing food intake and skipping meals

A diet should be viewed as a means of better eating rather than reduced eating. Therefore, your aim on a diet should be to improve the way you eat, as will be explained shortly.  Of course, weight loss depends on a caloric deficit which forces the body to dig into its bodyfat reserves. The best way to create this deficit is to reduce your calories from unhealthy sources while at the same increasing your calorie expenditure through regular exercise. Unfortunately, many people choose to create this deficit by drastically reducing the calories in order to avoid exercising. 

In addition, many people tend to skip breakfast thinking that the lack of provision of food will force the body to burn body fat. This is the biggest mistake you can make. Your body has a survival mechanism. When it feels that little energy being given to it it switches to a "conservation mode", which brings fat loss to a grinding halt. Your metabolism stops.  That's why some people are surprised why in spite of eating like a mynah bird they still look like an elephant. That's because they have sluggish metabolisms, a major cause (among several other causes) of which is the lack of food intake.

You don't want to become like this, do you? 

2. Not eating balanced meals

Many weight loss diets that you see and weight loss advice thrown around are very incorrect because they totally disregard the important concept of balanced nutrition.  More often than not these diets are not balanced. By balanced I mean not containing the main macronutrient groups (proteins, carbohydrates and fats).  Very commonly, fad diets are too low in protein, something which can contribute to muscle tissue loss. For example, the advice to eat "lots of fruits and vegetables" is incorrect because fruits and vegetables are not balanced foods. Fruits and vegetables will lead you to a protein- and fat-deficient state. Fruits and vegetables should be combined with other food groups that bring proteins and fats.

A fruit salad is nice but it's not a complete meal

Even as a dieter, a balanced diet is necessary. It is obvious that to achieve your weight loss goals, the relative amounts of these nutrients will be different from those recommended to someone looking, for instance, to gain weight. In the case of someone trying to lose weight and stay healthy, a diet rich in protein, moderate in fat and low in carbohydrates (especially sugar) is recommended.

Over the years, I have analysed hundreds of diets and talked to a lot of people and surprisingly, I see that they do not eat balanced meals. Many people only eat cereal in the morning which is principally carbohydrates.  Some people eat only a salad for dinner with a few slices of bread. Again it is a good meal, but it is devoid of proteins. An apple as a snack is good, but it is not a balanced meal because it does not contain protein and fat. We need balanced meals. This brings us to our next point.

3. Too much focus on the elimination of fat rather than carbohydrates

Fats have received undeserved bad publicity and have been implicated as a cause of obesity and cardiovascular complications. This has led to millions of people avoiding fat like the plague. Fats have been unjustly vilified  If you ask someone who is dieting what is the first thing he/ she does when going on a diet, you will always get the response " I eat low fat", "I steam rather than stir-fry". This is not always a good practice because the fact that fats are the main cause of obesity and diabetes is a lie. It is the biggest lie in the history of medical science. Are you surprised?

I will deal with the topic of fat in a future article, but for now it is sufficient to bear in mind that all fats are not the same. A good diet should consist of good sources of fats such as almonds, nuts, olive oil, fish oil, avocado, whole eggs etc. You will shoot yourself in the foot if you eliminate fat from your diet.

Some change in thinking is in order

3. Challenging beliefs about fats
The mistaken belief about fat, as mentioned above has led people to think that they are better off eliminating all fat (or most) from the diet. Therefore, one can think a bowl of breakfast cereal is excellent, because the remark "zero fat" is elegantly indicated on the label. Zero fat is a marketing hoax. Haven't you asked yourself why, in spite of low- or zero-fat foods being so abundant in supermarket aisles, people are more obese and diabetic than never before? Something must be wrong somewhere, right? 

Indeed, because what people fail to realise is that these low-fat foods are loaded with carbohydrates. Carbohydrates, whether low or high GI will eventually lead to sugar in the blood stream that your body will eventually have to get rid of. Just look at the nutritional content of your innocent-looking box of low fat cereal or yogurt.

Low fat yes but loaded with sugars. Don't let them trick you

Indeed, the high consumption level of carbohydrates, especially sugars are responsible for weight gain, obesity and diabetes. But people have been brainwashed into believing that what's low fat is good for you, no matter what else is in it and that includes sugars and carbohydrates. It does not matter as long as they eat less food and less fat.  The diets of most people are largely carbohydrate-based. If you take some time and look at your diet you will most likely see that you are consuming way too much carbohydrates and not even your daily quota of proteins. 

This is low fat and supposed to be healthy.WRONG. It is loaded with carbs and sugars.  Low fat is not always = healthy 

Here is an example of a typical poor diet (carbohydrate-based) that I've met too often. And yes, people follow such diets in an attempt to lose weight!

Breakfast: cereal and fruit instant mix (if people even eat breakfast)

Snack (if any): an apple

Lunch: vegetable salad, bread and a fruit.

Dinner: vegetable soup and bread

Solutions and some recommendations:

1. Eat small portions more often

Fat burning means keeping your metabolism alive. Good nutrition can boost your metabolism, contrary to what one might think. Trying to maintain an active metabolism is like trying to keep a fire burning. I always use the following analogy:

If you do not add fuel to the fire it stops burning (not giving enough food).

Give too much fuel at once, it chokes and stops burning (eating too much at a time)

Provide small amounts of fuel on a regular basis and will continue to burn.

This means that you should eat regularly. Instead of three big meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) or even one meal a day, you should eat six smaller meals of breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snacks and dinner. Obviously, your main meals are smaller to accommodate these snacks. Again, a fruit by itself is not an appropriate meal or even a snack. A piece of fruit (carbohydrates) and a handful of almonds (protein and fat) is a much better solution. Another alternative is pro-vita biscuits with cottage cheese. For lunch you can have an egg and vegetable salad. These are all balanced meal options. 

2. Prepare your meals in advance

Food is one of our basic needs and we work hard to be able to feed ourselves. Why, then, do people take shortcuts when it comes to their diet? Why do people work so hard to only eat so poorly badly that eventually they will have to go spend money on medicines later? Not having time is a lame excuse. I wake up at 4 am every morning to make my meals for the day or I go to sleep an hour later to make sure that my meals are prepared for the next day. True, I eat because I'm an athlete, but you can also prepare at least two meals to bring along with you to work or school. A home-made meal is much healthier and cheaper than fast food.

People no longer pack meals to bring to work anymore.
They'll eat out or worse, starve thinking they'll lose weight. LOL

3. One more time: eat balanced meals and make adjustments in macronutrients

A meal should consist of a portion of protein, carbohydrates and lipids. Your protein source should be more or less the size of your fist. Vegetables can be quite abundant while forms of carbohydrates like rice and flour should be limited. You must include a fat source too. Vegetarians need some adjustments because their protein sources also come with a some carbohydrate. I'm not too knowledgeable about the vegetarian diet, but I suggest they reduce added sugars and include more green leafy vegetables. Mixed and green leafy vegetables are also carbohydrate sources but they are fibrous carbohydrates and are not as carbohydrate-dense on a per gram basis. They contain a lot of water.  

This is an example of a balanced meal

I hope this article has helped you to identify mistakes in your diet and provided basic information to better prepare a diet. My future articles will focus on selected topics of nutrition and exercises that help burn fat and tone the body. Until next time, goodbye and good health to all.

Further Reading & Studying
I do research studies at the University of Cape Town in the field of exercise science, nutrition, obesity and type 2 diabetes. My head professor, Professor Tim Noakes recently held a debate as follows:

Tim Noakes, director of the UCT/Medical Research Council (MRC) Research Unit for Exercise Science and Sports Medicine and Discovery Health professor of exercise and sports science shares his views during the "The Great Centenary Debate" at the University of Cape Town's Faculty of Health Sciences. The debate was a showdown between Noakes and Dr Jacques Rossouw on the topic 

"Cholesterol is not an important factor for heart disease and current dietary recommendations do even more harm than good."

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©,2013, Veeraj Goyaram, Bodybuilding Mauritius. Any reprinting in any type of media is prohibited.

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