Dieting- What to Eat

Dieting- What to Eat:

Why Diet:
    Dieting is almost always associated with loosing weight or "cutting." A better definition of dieting, however, is ANY means by which you control your consumption of energies for improved health. For this reason dieting is important for all fitness goals weather it be gaining or loosing weight. I will however be focusing on cutting techniques in this post so bare that in mind if you are trying to "bulk up."
    There are many theories on dieting. Some are effective and some are not but most are unhealthy, unsustainable, or both. Many companies are created to sell weight loss shortcuts  commercials sell meal plans, diet pills, or exercise equipment that will make you thinner but most of these are designed to be unsustainable so that you have to buy more from the company to remain skinny. I will not go deep into this area of things because I want to focus on what you should do and not what you shouldn't do, but besides the fact that these products may be unhealthy, their primary flaw is that they don't teach you how to eat for yourself in a sustainable and comfortable way. In order to loose weight and keep it off, or eat healthy in general, you need to understand what about your diet is healthy so that you can continue to do it on your own. It also has to be comfortable for you to do because the goal of healthier living is for you to be happier.

Calories:
    Dieting is very important for cutting. The body uses different types of food in different ways because of their chemical make up. Certain foods are used to strengthen different parts of your body (not like carrots make your calves bigger, but more like bananas make your muscles stretchier), and certain foods are stored as fat by your body. Its important to know what does what in regards to fat production so that you can avoid the foods that your body will store as fat. The fact that your body uses different foods in different ways is why calorie counting, the practice of limiting the amount of calories you consume, can be ineffective or unhealthy.
    Calories are the energy that is found in all food and they are measured in grams. 
Here is a short video to help you understand what a Calorie is.

    Calories are a broad term for all energy and so the problem with calorie counting is that it does not take into account the different types of calories. These different types are what one will see on a nutrition facts label. The three main types of calories are as follows: Fats, Carbohydrates, and Proteins. Within fats and carbohydrates (carbs) there are also both good and bad types,but if you are just learning how to diet it is easier to start by staying away from these two types of calories and stick more towards proteins.The reason to stay away from these two types of calories is that they both are the most likely to be stored as fat. Fat is already fat so it is easy for your body to keep it that way and carbs (particularly sugars) are stored as fat because  they are not easily used energy, so they take longer for your body to process. Your body will burn calories that are easier to breakdown into usable energy first and then it will only use carbs and fats if it needs to. If your body doesn't need them right away it will store them as fat so it can use them, if it needs them, later.
    It is important to know where the bad calories are so you can avoid them. The best way to do this is to read the nutrition facts for all the food that you eat. Nutrition facts can usually be found on the packaging for any food that can be purchased. If the nutrition facts are not available for any reason, they can almost always be found online.
   
 It is important for me to note a few final health points:

1. Make sure that you are not cutting out carbs and fats all together. your body needs all kinds of nutrition, it just doesn't need as much as we sometimes give it. Also many vitamins and nutrients are found in food that contains a lot of fats or carbs. Fruits for instance have many vitamins that we need but they also have a lot of sugars in them. For this reason try to get your carbs and fats from natural foods. Nuts and olive oil contains healthy fats and fruits contain healthy sugars.
2. Eat your carbs and fats in the morning. Since we must eat some carbs and fats for health reasons it is useful to eat those in the morning. Eating them in the morning ensures that you have the most possible time to burn them off. If your body doesn't need them right away you still have a lot of opportunities to burn them before the night comes and your body stores them as fat.
3. Eat proteins for muscle growth. Your muscles are comprised of proteins. The proteins are wound tightly around each other and when you work out, or contract your muscles, the proteins are torn apart a little. If you eat enough proteins then your body has plenty of proteins to fill in the gaps after you work out. Even if you are not working out your body can still use those proteins to strengthen your muscles, though not as much.