Is becoming wheat-free a diet or a lifestyle change? At some point in time, you or someone you know begins the daunting task of losing weight in order to look and feel better, or for better health. For most, this process means restricting calories to the point of starvation.
Yes, you guessed it: the dreaded diet. At first, you're highly motivated to lose those unwanted pounds. But as time passes and you continue to deny your hunger, the motivation fades. That's why so many diets are difficult to follow. Your body's energy demands begin to outweigh the amount of calories your diet of choice allows.
Your constant hunger challenges your desire to lose weight and your resolve to stick to your diet, so you experience weakness and a slowed metabolism. You lose your self-control, you give in, and it's adios, diet. Often, you end up gaining more weight and become even more unhealthy than you were before you started.
Having a greater understanding of how wheat, sugar, and vegetable oils affect your weight and health is essential in choosing or developing a diet that will make everyone around you envious. Applying that information to your diet gives you the structure needed to stay the course of good health.
Many philosophies and diets surrounding food contradict the wheat-, sugar-, and vegetable oil-free lifestyle that's necessary to ensure good health. Understanding the truths behind the more controversial dietary information — such as the idea that red meat is unhealthy, that consumption of fat and cholesterol should be minimized, and that you just have to burn off more calories than you take in — can help you gain confidence in your diet.
And confidence is what you need when so many incorrect, mixed messages are swirling around you in every direction.
Mainstream diets can be effective in that they provide a structure with their eating plans. That's not to say that all diets suggest eating healthy foods, however.
Quite the contrary. As a general rule, diets restrict calories because of a belief that the less you eat, the less you weigh. The first step to eating less for most plans is reducing the amount of fat. Typically, though, the fat is replaced by wheat-filled offerings.