Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Weight Loss Diet With Medical Conditions

Losing weight can be difficult, but it is a goal that a lot of people want to meet, especially with the coming of the New Year. There's nothing like a New Year's feast to convince someone that he or she needs to lose weight: there's nothing like a whole lot of food and a whole lot of feasting to tell someone that he or she should really shed off those pounds of turkey, cake, eggnog, and sweets in order to either stay in shape or be in better shape the year after. But why is it so difficult to keep a weight loss resolution?

One reason why people often have a hard time keeping their resolutions is the fact that they may quite unspecific ones. By pledging that one will lose weight, one will neglect to mention how much weight should be lost. A pound is quite good to lose, and so are two, but ten pounds would be good; how many pounds can one lose, indeed, and how advisable would it be to lose ten pounds, especially if your body weight is already near ideal? Losing weight is therefore an abstract concept that needs a lot of clarification, and it should be clarified for the benefit of the person who wants to lose weight: by knowing how much weight to lose, a person has a better way of keeping track of his or her goal.

Another reason why people often have a hard time keeping the resolution of losing weight is the fact that they do not say how they will lose their weight. Will they exercise all day? Will they drink pills that will force their fats out through their sweat or into their bowels? Will they go into a crash diet? There are many different diets that people can undergo, so if you are interested in dieting to lose weight, you still need to know how specific diets work, and how they might affect your body should you launch into them without consulting your doctor.

For instance, some popular diets rely on the no-carbohydrate way to lose weight. These diets operate on the premise that carbohydrates contribute to body weight because they remain unused by the people who take them in. This is most evident in your daily office scenes: you have people crunching down on chocolate or snack bars, or eating cakes and bread, but spending the rest of the day sitting down and working at a computer. This unburned set of carbohydrates can indeed contribute to one's weight, so the idea of a no-carbohydrate diet, relatively, is to pump the body with proteins instead.

Some low-carbohydrate diets can often force people to eat a lot of meat and legumes, which can tax on the kidneys especially if the person undergoing the diet does not drink a lot of water. In general, eating well means eating everything in moderation: there's the food pyramid on which to base one's eating habits, and the advice of one's doctor on which to act. A good diet, therefore, does not involve taking out one group of nutrients entirely, and neither does it mean engorging the body with only one group of nutrients.

If you are interested in going through a diet, you may need to consult with your doctor first. You may have underlying medical conditions that might keep you from losing weight because of the diet, or that might be detrimental to your body if you go through it. For instance, if you have a predisposition to gout, you may want to avoid low-carbohydrate and no-carbohydrate diets that preach how proteins are the way to go. You will make your gout much worse, and make your kidneys work overtime.

There are many other options that you can take advantage of, such as exercise. In fact, the best weight loss regimen is a combination of exercise and a good diet, along with the advice of a good doctor, exercise expert, and nutritionist. There's no sense in going overboard with just one regimen: if you are able to do everything in moderation, and still enjoy your life without depriving yourself of good food or free time away from exercise, you can still lose weight and keep that New Year's resolution.

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