upon hearing them they automatically think it involves a difficult “food restriction” or that they will achieve a totally positive impact simply by including some variety of “healthy foods”.
From today onwards, I want it to be very clear to you that “diet” is the specific way or type of eating that each person has according to their habits, beliefs, customs, economic level, or region where they live. This is in addition to the fact that all people have personal tastes and choose to eat or not eat certain things for reasons ranging from the physical, through the cultural, the psychological, and up to the religious. An example of this is that some people have the habit of eating mainly vegetables, completely avoiding the intake of animal protein; these are called vegetarians, and although their diet is plant-based, not all of them are thin, because the fact of including “healthy foods” does not mean they restrict the caloric intake in grains, cereals, fruits, vegetables, soy, tofu, or vegetable fats; another example is when a child is asked at school what the Mexican diet is based on, and they answer, corn, due to their region.
We all have a specific diet; the important thing is to be sure that it is the right one, and for that, it is not enough to use foods with the ideal nutrients (healthy foods), but it is essential to know how much of each to add, how to combine them, and how often to eat them, in order to truly achieve “healthy eating habits”.
CHARACTERISTICS OF A GOOD DIET
A healthy diet must meet the following characteristics:
- Provide the energy and nutrients the body needs, without deficiencies or excesses.
- Have an appropriate meal schedule.
- Be appetising.
- Maintain a balance between the calorie intake appropriate to energy expenditure.
- Have the recommended caloric profile with proteins, fats, and carbohydrates.
- Achieve adequate amounts of vitamins, minerals, and fibre in its foods.
When a person wishes or needs to lose weight, a reducing or hypocaloric diet is planned for them. The same applies when they suffer from an illness of some kind and require special care in some aspect of their diet. The sum of all these reasons justifies the existence of diets as such, and therefore the professional specialty that the care of all these details implies.
The first step in defining the ideal diet is to determine your main objective for your body and physique. STOP! before following someone's recommendations, carefully analyse what they can offer you or what they have actually achieved with their method.
What do I mean? There are people who are only interested in losing weight quickly at the expense of their own health, and if we saw them, we might think that because they have lost kilos they look better, when in reality NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, since to achieve it they have sacrificed their muscles (the heart is a muscle), their body (their cells and immune system), their physique (they look as if they were old or sick), and their mood and mental state (they feel tired, irritable, with insomnia...), meaning they achieved their objective quickly, while also obtaining premature ageing, an increased risk of illness, and emotional instability.
Another type does not want to sacrifice so much and becomes the ideal target for those who love to sell anything, turning them into potential consumers. This person believes they have acquired miracle products when in reality they are just spending time and money to avoid effort. Just depending on something for the rest of your days to maintain an objective IS NOT NORMAL, and a time will come when you will abandon it and return to where you started, adding that many of them have side effects in the long or short term, and others are not even endorsed by the World Health Organization. Few people truly seek to lose kilos by increasing their quality of life, that is, they are willing to change their eating habits and adopt a healthy lifestyle to maintain the results.
The best diet is one that, in addition to making you look and feel good: encourages you to have healthy life habits, one that you can share with any member of your family regardless of their age or health, one that guarantees you will not fall prey to consumerism.
So among so many diets, which one will be the IDEAL one? How could I check between one and another?
The one that manages to regenerate you at a cellular level to thus increase your quality and length of life! Simply put, the one that provides you with the best results in laboratory tests, that has reduced your excess body fat, and also makes you look and feel good mentally and physically.
