Popular diet misconceptions: what you need to know about your diet

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To lose "extra" kilograms, many women use the most unexpected recipes. Some advise eating sprouted wheat in the morning, only walnuts for lunch, and a spoonful of honey instead of dinner. Others, no less knowledgeable people, recommend eating only dandelions, plantains, or lamb's quarters, etc. Still others advocate only raw food (including meat).

But there are also various women's magazines and websites that regularly publish a huge number of different diets, many of which have a pseudo-scientific tint and therefore look convincing in the eyes of the gullible reader (or rather, readers).

Here are some popular dietary misconceptions for women:

• gelatin dessert does not contribute to fat deposition;
• grapefruit causes weight loss;
• there are no calories in fruits;
• high-protein foods have no calories;
• 200 grams of meat increase fat deposits less than 200 grams of potatoes;
• there are far fewer calories in toast than in bread.

It should be said that the diet business is quite profitable - there are no special costs, but the profits from the sale of popular literature are colossal, and such websites are often visited. By writing a "trendy" book, a nutritionist immediately becomes a "trendy" specialist and again makes a good profit. And whether his diets either do not help or "work" due to simple self-suggestion, is it so important to him? But it is important to us, so it is advisable to know at least the main myths about diets.

 

Is diet a modern invention?

Many people think that the interest in diets is an obsession peculiar to modern man. However, this is not quite so. The origins of modern diet therapy lie in the distant past. For example, in China, the first diet doctors already existed during the Zhou Dynasty (around the 2nd century BC), they gave their recommendations for the treatment and prevention of various diseases.

So, thin children were recommended thick rice broth, egg yolks, beans, fish, that is, foods rich in complete proteins, as well as vegetables and fruits rich in vitamins and mineral salts. For edema, they recommended eating porridge made from black beans, for cough - from almonds. For dysentery - fish porridge. Elderly people were prescribed to eat often and in small amounts.

Ancient diet doctors argued that nutrition must take into account the individual characteristics of a person. The body needs all foods, but their ratio and amount should change depending on age, constitution, habits, and climate.

So, for example, in winter, preference was given to food that "warms" the body. These are eggs, dishes made from grain products: wheat, barley, oats; spicy food - onions, young radish, pepper; fatty types of fish and meat. In winter, metabolism is activated, so you can eat more spicy and fatty foods.

In summer, on the contrary, the body needs cooling, and the diet should be dominated by "cooling" products: rice, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, radishes, fruits, berries, duck, veal, fish (non-fatty), etc.

Healing diets were used by almost all great healers: Avicenna, Paracelsus, Hippocrates. Hippocrates said:

“Your food should be your medicine, and your medicine should be your food.”

Since the mid-18th century, naturopathy as a separate direction began to develop in Germany. In the 20th century, it reached a particular peak in Switzerland, Germany, England, and America.

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Are "trendy" diets effective?

Dietology has always been an irrational branch of healthcare. With the most various diseases, it imposed strict dietary therapies in an unusual form, thereby subjecting patients to torture.

It has been calculated that there are currently more than 28,000 diets in the world. It is also interesting that 65% of Americans start a new diet at least once a year. There is no data on how often our compatriots "go on" a diet, but probably not much less than Americans.

Let's immediately note that we are not talking about therapeutic diets (specifically developed and recommended for medical practice diets), but about the so-called "trendy diets", those that promise an ideal figure and the elimination of all diseases in a week or two, a month. And there are a great many such diets: points, low-calorie, protein, vegetable, cheese, English, Japanese, French, Hollywood, ballet, etc.

The distinguishing feature of almost all "trendy diets" is that they mostly do not help. And primarily because they are built on forcibly limiting oneself in certain foods. Only in rare cases do people with an extraordinary will manage to "remake" themselves with the help of a diet. Mostly, however, the torments a person goes through applying this or that diet are futile.

Doctor of Science, Director of the Nutrition Clinic at the Medical College in Houston (USA) John Foreyt states:

“Trendy diets, completely excluding carbohydrates or based on one type of food, for example, grapefruits or watermelons, can cause concentration and clear thinking impairments by the third day. When we spend too much energy worrying about food, it negatively affects all aspects of life.”

It turns out that about 90% of people who follow different diets in the hope of losing weight later regain their former kilograms within an average of five years. This conclusion was reached by the heads of the US National Institutes of Health, who discussed the effectiveness of various weight loss methods.

As studies conducted by the American Dietetic Association have shown, overly decisive attempts to lose weight practiced by young girls (diet, intensive physical exercises, the use of appetite suppressants, laxatives, and deliberate vomiting) increase the chances that over time they will become significantly overweight. Whereas people who do not attempt to lose weight usually find it much easier to maintain their shape.

And not so long ago, British doctors from the London Royal College proved that the fat that accumulates when you give up a diet again can be more dangerous for you than the original fat. Professor Tom Sanders notes:

“If you go on a diet and give it up again and again, the distribution of fat changes. The newly gained fat is deposited primarily in the abdominal cavity, near the internal organs, rather than between the muscles and the skin on the sides and hips.”

According to doctors, this is very dangerous because the fat seeps from there into the liver and bloodstream, causing a sharp increase in blood cholesterol levels. And this, in turn, leads to the risk of stroke and can cause the formation of gallstones, as part of the cholesterol can crystallize there.

Those who have repeatedly tried diets to lose weight have noted that it becomes more difficult each time. The body remembers the diet as an extreme case and resists it more and more each time.

Thus, being on a diet, you risk acquiring heart disease, gallstones, diabetes, anemia, cancer, and osteoporosis. You will also have dry, brittle, unruly hair, an unhealthy complexion, dull eyes. You will feel depressed, and most importantly, you will soon inevitably gain weight again.

So what should those who want to lose weight do? It is best not to rely on miracle diets or pills, but to lead a healthy lifestyle, eat right, and move more. Listen to the words of William Hall, a representative of the American Association of Health Institutes:

“Forget the word ‘diet.’ Eat more fruits, vegetables, and grains, and make only those healthy changes to your diet that you can stick to for life.”

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Strict diets

Some believe that "harsh," strict diets are especially effective. This is nothing more than a myth. Such diets, excluding carbohydrates, "drain water". Practicing such a diet quickly loses weight and rejoices, thinking that he has gotten rid of fat. Alas, fat goes away very slowly, but it quickly increases after the diet. Moreover, usually a greater weight is gained than before. This happens because if you lack more than 1,000 calories every day, the body adjusts to a strict diet. The metabolic process slows down by 10–30%, that is, calories are burned more slowly. After such a diet, a person returns to their previous habits. But the body does not have time to quickly adjust to the new way and still burns calories slowly, hence the new rapid weight gain.

Another important point: in people on a strict diet, the brain, deprived of its usual nourishment in the form of glucose, can "strike," which sometimes manifests itself in nervous and mental disorders.

The strictest of them can eventually cause heart disease or cancer.

Renowned nutritionist William Pokhlebkin speaks about the danger of mono-diets:

“The main thing is not to eat only potatoes or only black caviar all the time. This greatly disrupts the metabolism. Many think that the body is a furnace, that whatever you throw in there will burn, and heat will be produced. But no. Understand that the body cannot specialize only in kefir (I say this for those who want to lose weight) or only in vegetables. The body cannot have a narrow specialization on just one product.”

English psychologists tested sixty absolutely healthy women for attention, memory, and reaction speed. Moreover, the first test was passed by the "subjects" after a strict diet, and the second after eating their fill. The results of the "hungry" test were 20–30% worse than the "full" ones. This allowed scientists to make a categorical conclusion: diet is real stress with all the ensuing consequences.

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Common Myths About Diets

You don't gain weight from some foods

You can gain weight from too many calories regardless of whether they are in cucumbers, lemons, low-fat cottage cheese, or a cutlet. Therefore, it is still advisable to know the measure in food.

 

Raw foods are better than cooked

It's not so simple. Some vegetables, such as eggplants and green beans, contain toxic substances that become harmless only after heat treatment. In addition, raw foods are not always well absorbed by the stomach.

 

Enzymes burn fat

In fact, there are no enzymes that break down fat. Fruits rich in enzymes, such as pineapple and papaya, which are credited with "fat-burning" properties, actually only aid digestion, which, of course, is also good. However, their consumption is unreasonable when a person is on a diet of low-calorie food. At about 40 °C, enzymes lose their properties, so eat fresh, not canned fruits.

 

Only fat makes you gain weight

In fact, as research shows, it doesn't matter at all whether we eat butter or whole grain bread. The main thing is still the amount of food consumed. An example of this is overweight American women who eat diet fat-free crackers. In fact, you should not deny yourself a small amount of fat - thanks to it we feel much fuller than from a ton of dry crackers.

In turn, American nutritionists highlight a number of common misconceptions about food, storage, and consumption of products.

 

Diet products help you lose weight

This statement is incorrect. The fact is that diet products and those that are eaten during a diet are not the same thing. Sometimes they contain as much fat as regular products, and sometimes even more.

 

Salad is the elixir of a slim figure

This opinion is partly true because lettuce leaves contain almost no calories. However, they are usually not consumed in pure form. And most salad dressings contain a lot of fat: one tablespoon - about 80 calories. Thus, a portion of salad can exceed 660 calories. This kind of "elixir" is unlikely to contribute to weight loss.

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Sugar-containing products

Some people think that to reduce the carbohydrate content in the diet, sugar-containing products should be replaced with candies or chewing gums labeled "sugar-free" or "diet". However, such products contain synthetic sweet substances: sorbitol, mannitol, or hexitol. These substances undergo the same transformations in the body as carbohydrates, only more slowly.

 

Liver is very healthy

This is not so straightforward. The liver, of course, has many vitamins, mineral salts, and proteins, but it also has a lot of fat and cholesterol.

Moreover, according to the American Dietetic Association, the liver of cattle accumulates chemicals and hormones in dangerous quantities, which enter the animal's body along with the feed. And the liver of a polar bear is generally dangerous: it contains a lethal dose of vitamin A for the human body (however, the opportunity to feast on polar bear liver is certainly not a threat to most of us).

 

"Snacking" is harmful

This has been accepted in the medical community for a long time. However, according to recent studies, it is not how often you eat, but what you eat that matters. Therefore, snacking between regular meals is good if you choose fruits or low-fat yogurt.

 

A light breakfast will help you lose weight

No such connection has been found. It may be better to eat 3–4 hours after sunrise. Then hunger will not torment you much during the day, and you will be able to get by with light "snacks".