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Diet tactics to avoid
Diet tactics to avoid Despite the hype, these tactics are unlikely to help Diet pills. Weight-loss pills have a discouraging track record. “Fat burners” such as amphetamines and ephedra have been linked to heart palpitations, strokes, heart attacks, and deaths, even in healthy people.The prescription weight-loss drug sibutramine (Meridia) produces, at best, only modest weight loss compared with regular dieting, and it elevates heart rate and blood pressure.Orlistat (Xenical), a prescription drug that blocks absorption of fat, never became a best seller because of its side effects--oily anal leakage and diarrhea--and because it, too, produced an unimpressive average weight loss. Experts expect even more modest performance from Alli, a new over-the-counter version, because it is only half the strength of the prescription drug.There’s no good clinical evidence for supplements promoted for weight loss, including chromium picolinate and hoodia. To their credit, the books we evaluated did not recommend any of those products.Angel and devil foods. Some diets allow coffee, and some ban it; the same for milk and fruit. Lists of foods with special powers were part of two diet books we reviewed: The Abs Diet’s “Power 12” and the “Top Ten Sonoma Diet Power Foods.”Though it makes sense to purge your diet of junk food, there’s no evidence that the presence or absence of any individual food will make or break a diet of the right calorie level.“It’s never one food. It’s the dietary pattern that’s the key,” said Lisa Sasson, M.S., R.D., clinical assistant professor of nutrition at New York University.The glycemic index. Several of the diet books based their meal plans on the principle of avoiding foods that cause a rapid rise in blood sugar, so-called high-glycemic-index foods.The science behind this is solid: If your blood sugar shoots up abruptly, your body responds by pouring out insulin to get rid of it. That causes your blood sugar to drop, making you feel hungry and crave more food.The trouble is that aside from junk food, “people eat mixed foods rather than single foods,” said Christopher Gardner, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine at Stanford University.This makes it tough to predict the blood-sugar response.Also, research studies have reached conflicting conclusions about whether cutting the glycemic load of a weight-loss diet actually improves results.If you do want to control your blood sugar, remember that lean proteins, healthy fats, and high-fiber fruits, vegetables, and grains slow down glucose absorption. So if you want to eat a small serving of white bread, white rice, or potatoes, surround them with those slowly absorbed foods.
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