When people think about losing weight and being healthy they typically think about jumping on a “fad” diet to lose weight quickly or running yourself into the ground with cardio to burn calories. Both of these have to run in conjunction with each other because if you want to exercise you have to fuel your body correctly for energy. You also have to fuel with foods that have proper nutrition to speed up your metabolism. Just how important is each one when it comes to losing weight and living a healthy and fit lifestyle? The studies that have been done show that your diet accounts for 80% of your weight loss while exercise accounts for 20%. I don’t want to diminish the importance of exercise for a healthy lifestyle however this shows how important it is to pay attention to what is going into your body and make sure you are putting the right kinds of foods in for the best results. There aren’t many people out there that need convincing that the food you find at fast food restaurants is hardly food as all. It’s a makeup of chemicals and by products shaped to resemble food. These are the products we put into our bodies that don’t have the proper nutrition to fuel us correctly. You can eat horrible food and expect to be chiseled like a Greek God. That’s like fueling your car with kerosene and expecting it to run properly and last.
I’m going to venture down the road of which diet is the best for you or which is the most effective because in all honesty some diets will work better for someone than others will. Some out there are not healthy for your body to do so I urge you to consult your doctor or a nutritionist about any that you would like to try before starting. I personally keep more towards a Paleo type of diet which is also known as the “Caveman Diet”. Following a diet can be tough and often daunting. Don’t get discouraged though! I have a cheat meal once a week which helped keep me driven. Every day I would remind myself that I just have to make it to that meal and I could eat anything I wanted. Eventually it got to the point that my cheat meal is a healthy fresh pizza made at our local health food grocery store. The greasy cheat foods didn’t taste as good as they used to so I stopped getting them. Bringing it back to the Paleo diet; To keep it fairly simple this diet allows you to eat things that the cavemen had access to which, as you have already guessed, would mean no processed foods. My diet consists of veggies, fruits, and chicken for the most part. I occasionally have fish but try to avoid red meat and pork which is more of a personal choice rather than for health. As far as fruits I stick more with berries than with the higher sugar fruits like apples and oranges. I do eat them but I limit how much. The Paleo diet is good for someone that is active because it still allows you the starchy veggies that are high in carbs for energy. This is why diets like Keto are not good options for a long term diet plan. It gets quick results by cutting carbs that your body will need to exercise and you need to look more for a long term lifestyle change.
Some people argue that eating healthier is more expensive than just grabbing junk food off the shelves at the grocery store. I thought this same thing and in some ways it is. The key is to balance out the expenses…I will explain how this works for us. We found that buying fruits and veggies from our farmers market in the city is a lot cheaper than buying them from the grocery store. The same is true of the meat and fish at the meat market there so we buy from there to save money and spend what we saved on the other items from the store that cost more such as almond milk and pistachios. No matter what diet you chose to follow, make sure it is one that will work for you given your activity level and also consult your doctor about the diet to make sure it is healthy so you aren’t damaging your body in the process of trying to live a healthier lifestyle.
Journey with the Walkers 