In the fitness industry, there are dozens of ways to alter one’s diet in order to achieve peak performance in addition to keeping the body happy and healthy.
As mentioned in a prior post, fasting is a very effective way to reset your body’s cycles and yield results such as burning body fat and increasing metabolism. This dieting technique involves zero food intake for an extended period of time (longer than 10-12 hours). Intermittent fasting is the process of eating 2 meals a day, during a 4-8 hour eating period. The rest of the day is spent fasting, without any food intake. Complete fasting is multiple days without food intake back to back. When you are fasting, it is very easy to become dehydrated, so it is important to drink lots of water.
The Keto diet is a diet that utilizes high-fats and low-carbs in order to accomplish a similar effect to fasting. By decreasing your carb intake, your body goes into the same state as when you fast – Ketosis (hence the name Keto). During this state, your body burns fat storages rather than carbs, due to the lowered / eradicated carb intake.
A Vegetarian diet is a diet that is centered around the avoidance of meat. This diet – like a vegan diet – has many variations. Some vegetarians eat fish, some don’t. Some vegetarians eat eggs, others don’t. There is no standard version of the vegetarian diet, and the diet is unique to each person’s needs and ethical morals. This diet is associated with the decrease risk of heart conditions and unhealthy blood sugar levels (diabetes).
A Vegan diet is similar to the vegetarian diet, however, it is much more extreme. Veganism is a dieting method that avoids any and all animal products. This is often done for one of three reasons. The first is an ethical reason – avoiding and protesting the maltreatment of animals in the food production process. The second is environmental reasons – supporting farmers by purchasing clean and organic food. The third reason is the health benefits. A vegan diet has been linked to blood sugar regulation and higher intake of nutrient rich food.
Dieting is a careful and fragile art that demands a lot of time and attention. Being diligent is an important factor of dieting, but not so much that it causes an unhealthy mentality. Unhealthy dieting includes calorie counting / restricting, eating disorders and yo-yo diets. Calorie counting includes the obsessive tracking of calories, usually to hit – but not surpass – a daily caloric goal. This is often a symptom of an eating disorder called Anorexia, which is associated with food restriction and avoiding food. This is not fasting. This is extended avoidance of food in order to lose unhealthy and excessive amounts of weight. Yo-yo dieting is an on-off diet program that is associated with periodic weight loss and weight gain that is associated with eating particular diets for short periods of time without endurance or commitment. Due to the lack of commitment, the weight is gained back, causing an up-and-down weight trend – also known as yo-yoing.
Muscles and Meal Planning 