Diet

There is a very definite role played by diet in a person's health. What we eat and drink forms one of the major contributors to the state of physical and mental health.

Many people are coming over to this way of thinking now that the relevance diet plays in the nation's health is being popularized by many TV documentary shows.

Where the idea of fitness was once synonymous with health and diet took a back seat to getting fit by working out or taking Pilates or dancer aerobic classes or whatever, however you look at it, exercise and working out alone does not complete the entire picture of health.

My belief is that diet is vitally important. So what exactly is the important role that diet has to play in the overall scheme of things related to health?

Diet Right and Diet Healthy

Fuel for the Body

The obvious initial reaction is to naturally equate the food that we eat with the energy source that keeps the home fires burning and the body able to function in all its actions.

This is true but still only a part of the whole.

The food that provides that fuel must be of the greatest quality in order for the body to extract the maximum benefit from it.

Keeping our bodies correctly fed has been likened in some ways to filling an automobile with gas. If your engine is finely tuned and requires the highest grade of fuel for optimum performance, filling it with a low grade fuel will impact its performance.

If you put in diesel fuel instead of gas, I think you already know that your car isn't going to go very far before shuddering to a halt in a cloud of black smoke.

The same applies to our bodies. They need the right kind of fuel to work correctly and that is healthy, natural food.

It's all about what we eat and getting good diet tips.

When we fill our tank with garbage, like fast food, processed meals, sweet desserts and candy bars and try and stay hydrated by drinking soda and other flavored drinks, we can expect plenty of trouble down the line.

While our bodies are very resilient and can cope with all that garbage for a while, it won't be running at its optimum level and things will start to break down sooner rather than later.

Bad Fuel, Bad Body

After a time, the body will get clogged up with all that garbage.

The arteries and veins will clog up with fatty deposits, which we know as cholesterol and triglycerides which we also know can lead to heart disease and strokes.

Our digestive tract gets clogged up with all that excess red meat that we can't process, leading to triggers that set off diseased bowels. It’s a known statistical fact that most Americans are walking around with as much as 7 pounds of undigested red meat in their colons every day.

Just think about that! What does a 7 pound burger look like?

You don't know because you can't buy one in most restaurants. Instead, if you really want to know, go into a burger joint and order 14 "half pounders" then see what that looks like on your tray! You get the idea.

All the sugar contained in sweet desserts and candy, soda and other sweet foods and drinks is processed by your body in a way that leaves deposits of visceral fat around your major organs, in your belly and in your liver.

That is dangerous especially when those fat deposits end up around your heart.

Burning Off the Bad

The thing is that unless you are a heavily training athlete, you are never going to burn off all that sugar and so it will get deposited as fat.

Unless you are running ten miles every day followed by some form of cardio circuit training program, you are simply going to save up all that fat for a time that your body thinks you'll need it to survive. But in today's society of plenty, that day will likely never come.

So you just get fatter and fatter and more and more unhealthy!

So what is the answer and how can you get off your own personal treadmill leading you nowhere except toward an unhealthy and shortened life?

How can dieting be made easy enough to follow to success?

Diet Right and Diet Healthy

There are many diet plans available that can help to wean you off a diet of junk food and other garbage, but it is you who must make the choice to use them.

One way that the diet industry is helping ordinary people to lose weight is that the cost of convenient diets remains low enough to be within the budgetary reach of most people. This is one way of helping yourself when you may not be in a position to do it any other way.

If you have more time to yourself and the determination and motivation to improve your health, then you can start to shop for fresh, healthy foods and stop filling your basket up with packets of processed junk. This is my preferred way forward.

That means you will have to start preparing real meals with real (natural) food, preparing and cooking them yourself. However, I believe it’s a small sacrifice for the bigger benefit of becoming healthier and slimmer into the bargain.

Surely that's worth your time and effort.