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Dieting Article

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Dieting has gotten a serious makeover. With obesity rates on the rise, dieting has become more and more popular, and more and more fashionable as a result. With this new trendiness has come an onslaught of fad diets that all say if you eat the right foods in the right amounts, you can shed upwards of thirty pounds in a week. The most basic rule of dieting is this—you have to eat less calories than you expend. Human beings generally require 2,000 calories to survive each day, so diets must provide fewer calories than that. Furthermore, they must be properly balanced nutritionally. Proper portions of fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals and proteins are essential when dieting. Eating less means less chances for your body to get the nutrients it needs.
	Physical exercise is important for all dieters. Eating less causes the body’s metabolism to decrease, meaning that constant exercise is a necessity. Aerobic exercise works wonders, however anaerobic exercise, such as strength training, is essential in order to keep the body’s metabolism high. Eating four to six meals with small portions is also a good way to keep the body’s metabolism high. If this is successful, you will be losing fat and replacing it with muscle of equal weight. While some people choose to enhance the body’s natural metabolism with weight-loss pills, they are not recommended.
Fad diets promise great results, but the result you end up with will vary. New diets such as the Atkins diet, the South Beach diet and the Zone diet all claim rapid weight loss in two or three weeks. While this may be true, most dieters never realize that these diets offer a comprehensive plan for living on them even after the weight loss is complete. Not following this “maintenance” phase of the diet may cause you to regain the pounds you lost on the first phase of the diet. At best, only time has been lost, but yo-yo diets can have serious consequences for a person’s health. If you must go with a name brand diet or group, choose a reputable one. Weight Watchers is one such organization. It has been around since 1963 and enjoys a good reputation. Another brand name organization is Jenny Craig, which also has a positive reputation, despite the fact that neither of its founders are professional nutritionists or health professionals.