Archive for the ‘Popular-Diets’ Category
The Truth About the Ice Cube Diet
February 26th, 2011 | 
Author: We have seen the abundance of weight loss supplements and diet programs in the market today and many have proven their mettle as an aid weight loss or maintenance. The ice cube diet is a new supplement gaining popularity with health and fitness buffs.
For those that are wondering about the diet, we will lay out the truth about this diet for you in this article.
It Takes Only One Cube a Day
The diet deals requires a person to take in just one ice cube per day in order to lose weight. However, the ice cube is of a special kind because, instead of purely water, it consists mainly of fresh frozen hoodia, a succulent plant indigenous to South Africa, along with lime juice for flavoring. The active compound present in hoodia, P57, is responsible for jump-starting the biochemical reactions that will make you feel full, regulating appetite while also providing you with energy.
Now, what is this South African plant that the ice cube diet is based on? It is the Hoodia Gordonii plant which grows only in the arid regions of the Kalahari Desert in South Africa. For countless centuries now, South African bushmen hunters have made extensive use of this plant in order to sustain their energy and limit their appetites during long hunting trips.
Given this particular application with the Kalahari bushmen, we could say that the hoodia gordonii has a proven track record in suppressing appetite and controlling hunger. The function of this plant is important ensuring that weight lost through exercise or diet won’t be sabotaged by over-eating.
All Natural Ingredients
Another advantage of the ice cube diet is that it is all natural. The frozen Hoodia accounts for 90% of the cubes make up with the remaining 10% consisting of organic lime juice, for flavoring, and water to help with freezing. There are no chemicals fillers involved in the production. Additionally, Mark Blumenthal of the American Botanical Council has stated that there have been no consumer reports of side effects. You can be assured that the diet is very safe.
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Does the Ice Cube Diet Work – The Ice Cube Diet, Frozen Hoodia
Does the ice cube diet work? Are there any side effects of the ice cube diet? What is fresh hoodia? Most of all, why is the ice cube diet so much better than the others?
Let’s start with the basics. What is fresh hoodia? Unknown to many, most of the hoodia-based weight loss supplements in the market go through a manufacturing process, leaving companies unable to account for handling of the product from start to finish and causing the plants active compound, P57, to lose potency. Simply put, you’re not getting the bang for your buck.
The truth about the ice cube diet is this: you are using fresh hoodia. However, it’s not the usual one used in some of the supplements in the market. As the diet’s name suggests, the supplement is delivered as a frozen hoodia cube.
Freezing the hoodia allows Desert Labs, the manufacturers, to maintain the quality of their main ingredient for longer periods of time. Moreover, the process of converting it into a supplement has become a lot simpler. Once the hoodia has been harvested from the company’s own fields, it is then immediately pureed and packaged into ice cubes before it’s sent to the United States.
If you can check out Hoodia products in the market, most pills that are sold never go beyond 1,000 mg. Thus, some of them will recommend that you take at least 2 every day, which is impractical and costly.
The ice cube diet can contain as much as 3,000 mg of hoodia. Surely, you have a powerful tool to help you resist the inner cravings for sweet treats and all the sinful dishes you encounter every day. What’s more, your body is given ample chance to burn as many calories as possible through a process called thermogenics. This can also speed up your metabolism.
Now does the diet really work? The answer clearly depends on the person. Each of us unique and thus the product’s effectiveness will vary from person to person. This explains why you can find a wide variety of ice cube diet reviews not only on the internet but even in magazines, journals, and books.
One independent study conducted with more than 100 women participants may help shed light on its effectiveness. After taking the supplement for 40 days, almost all of them experienced a significant drop in their weight. Many described themselves as healthier and happier.
Most of all, virtually all those taking the ice cube diet never experienced side effects such as dizziness or nausea generally associated with dieting and diet supplements.
Again, the diet’s effectiveness will depend on the individual simply because every person has his or her own genetic composition. It is also important to consult your physician before you begin any diet or exercise plan. All in all the ice cube diet is a healthy and all natural way to lose weight and is a product that can be trusted.
Dukan Diet Plan Versus The Diet Solution Program – Which is For You?
The Dukan Diet plan has been a highly successful plan in France for several years now and has recently begun getting more and more attention in other countries as well. I thought it would be interesting to compare it to another popular weight loss plan, the Diet Solution Program to see which one of these is better for you.
Personal nature of the program
The Dukan Diet has one general method by which it works. This method is applied by everyone who uses the program regardless of their age, gender, and so on. The Diet Solution Program takes a different approach. At the beginning of the program you take a short quiz that determines your metabolic type. Then, a personalized eating plan is recommended to you which is made for your metabolic type. This, according to the program, gives you a much better chance to lose weight than with a general program.
Protein focus
The Dukan Diet is a high protein program. The focus of the diet is on eating lots of protein. In fact, during the first two phases of the diet (which can last for weeks), you need to have many all protein days, one every other day at the very least.
The Diet Solution Program does not have this kind of focus on a single nutrient. The eating plan seems to be more varied and balanced.
Results
Both of these plans have positive testimonials from the many people who’ve used them. The Dukan Diet has reportedly been used by over 1.5 million people so it’s the more common program.
Support
As the Dukan Diet is a book (unless you sign up for one of their centers) it’s unclear whether it’s possible to get any support for this diet. The Diet Solution Program is an online diet plan so it has an online support system for any question you may have.
Ease of Use
If you can handle the all protein days, the Dukan Diet can work for you. If not, then you shouldn’t use it. The Diet Solution Program may be a good alternative for you. As both of these programs have good reviews, you need to choose the one that is best suited for you.
One of My Main Motivating Factors For Choosing a Vegan Die
Most people have seen the disturbing and heartbreaking undercover footage of feed-lots and slaughterhouses. Animals raised for food are routinely treated in ways that would result in felony cruelty-to-animals charges if dogs or cats were the victims. I love animals, and I hate the idea of animal cruelty. Most people do, but I would of course put the well being and feeding of hungry humans over any concern I have for animals any day. However knowing there is a dietary option that allows for this kind of revolting behavior to simply cease to exist puts me in a position to make only one choice.
In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt was deeply disturbed by the slaughterhouse images depicted in Upton Sinclair’s classic novel “The Jungle.” He ordered an investigation that led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of the same year. It was a step in the right direction. Another step consisted of the unionization of the meatpacking industry in the 1930s, resulting in fair wages and insurance coverage, as well as attention to safe working conditions.
But the industry pulled its plants from the cities and moved to the high plains states. Now, the majority of meat packing plant workers are immigrants, many of whom have been bused in to the country from Mexico by the companies themselves. Many meat workers learn of these jobs in the United States by Spanish radio advertisements paid for by U.S. meat companies.
In his 2001 book Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser reports: “We’ve gone backward…The wages in one Greeley, Colorado, plant now are 30 to 40 percent lower than when the plant opened in 1961. That’s not supposed to happen.”
Meatpacking is the most dangerous job in America. In statistics dated 1998 from the Labor Department, at least 29.3 percent of meat industry workers suffered injury or illness, compared to 9.7 percent for the rest of manufacturing.
The bottom line is too often the deciding factor for working conditions in this industry. The companies must speed up their lines to maximize their profits, which can lead to injuries and dangerous food due to lack of time to clean or sharpen blades. We have seen this kind of problem several times in the last decade specifically with recalled contaminated hamburger, which is more susceptible to dirty working environments than intact cuts of meat.
Meat packing plants have an almost 100% annual turn over of employees. That means no insurance, no retirement plans, nothing. And the wages start at minimum wage on the books, off the books. Who knows how little these immigrants are being paid?
The phenomenon of agribusiness has left us so far removed from our food, that we as a society allow this kind of injustice and inhumanity to continue, simply by v
The use of whey protein powder
As the most important protein powder is not only athletes but also for those who want to live a healthy life. Obesity is one of the biggest problems of a large group of people who now face. Recent research has shown that the protein may be a natural and pure in the diet cause weight loss. There is a trace element that can suppress appetite. The inclusion of the entire protein, but we believe that carbohydrates, as it digests quickly. This supplement is whey a better effect of weight loss than anything else. This surcharge will also increase the feeling of fullness that all other proteins.
The best way, whey protein powder is to be understood in the diet, to take a drink. In preparing to eat a protein shake and a breakfast you do not meet the requirements of the protein, but also suppress appetite and lose weight, not only whey proteins, but also offers a healthy immune system, the reason why the supplement is particularly useful that you get from milk and contains natural proteins isolated because cholesterol and fat are removed from the filtration. It is a protein supplement that has a high biological value than any other type of protein on the market. Because of this high quality whey protein as the best post workout supplements you can provide your muscles with key nutrients. Another advantage that comes with this protein supplement is that it has done little or milk sugar, lactose intolerant people to use safely.
How to Melt Body Fat Using Foods of High Thermogenics
In the market place, there are countless diet plans that advocate their own specific diet methods for burning fat, such as the low fat Ornish and Pritikin Diet which was strongly promoted by the American Heart Association back in the 1980’s. Although these diets were perfect for preventing heart disease and reducing cholesterol, in practice, it was discovered that over weight patients found it very difficult to stick with the diet mainly because of the low-fat content.
As an alternative to low-fat approaches, the famous South Beach Diet plan was created by cardiologist Arthur Agatston and dietitian Marie Almon. The cookie diet by Dr Sanford Siegal was designed as a means for overweight patients to control their hunger. All of these diets worked fine and have their own advantages but the element of individual food preferences and lifestyles will always prevail depending on what fits ones comfort zone.
There is a known theory that advocate by increasing the frequency of your food intake consequentially increases your body metabolism to increase energy consumption resulting from the repeated absorption and digesting process. Therefore, it is fair to say that increased metabolic rates Will eventually burn more body fat. This theory is very useful information for someone determined to design and create their own fat burning diet plan. By simply consuming 5 to 6 meals per day, Chose healthy foods for each meal.
Protein has the highest thermogenics which slightly increases body temperature and metabolism but the accumulation of calories burned per day could be major. Foods of high thermogenics should be considered as another option for melting body fat. The more energy your body uses, the more fat your body will eventually burn. Consuming foods of low-fat, low cholesterol’s, foods rich in monounsaturated fatty acids will compliment the process as well.
The concept of Glycemic Index was developed by Dr David J. Jenkins of the university of Toronto, as a measure of the effects of carbohydrates on blood sugar level. This is important if you intend on increasing your intake of foods rich in carbohydrates.
1) A high Glycemic Index level is when carbohydrates break down very fast during digestion, releasing glucose quickly into the bloodstream.
2) A low Glycemic Idex level is when carbohydrates break down more slowly during digestion, releasing glucose gradually slower into the bloodstream.
Therefore, to minimize the development of adipose or fatty tissues in the body, consumption of carbohydrates low in Glycemic Index is recommended, and although the body needs fatty tissues, too much will definitely make you overweight.
With an understanding of the various food types and their impact on your health and body, it becomes easier to adjust the intake and the type of foods you consume to achieve your desired weight loss goal.
Diets to Lose Weight Fast – What’s the Problem?
What’s the problem with diets to lose weight fast? They do not account for how the weight will stay off. You can lose weight quickly, but you must be prepared when it tries to come back on. Now losing weight quickly is not all that bad. There may be some reasons why you want to try to lose 10 pounds in a week. You may have a function to attend and you want to look your best. Or you may just want to jumpstart your weight loss. It’s so much easier to continue something when you have success.
Diets to lose weight fast will almost always be made up of meal plans that are not sustainable for long periods of time. Usually the low carb type diets will allow you to lose a large amount of weight quickly. But do you really want to go the rest of your life without eating bread and pasta? Let’s say that you don’t eat these foods until the total amount of weight is gone. You still have to either find a replacement for those foods or when you start back eating them, you will gain some or all of the weight back.
Successful weight loss means making lifestyle changes that you can stick with. You may not want to stop eating bread and pasta all together but you may be able to handle reducing the amount of bread and pasta that you eat, or changing to whole grain varieties. Your schedule may not allow you to eat 5 times a day every day, but you may be able to eat that way the majority of the time. Healthy changes that you turn into habits are the best diets to lose weight fast.
Dangers of an Atkins Diet
The Atkins or Low Carb Diet is enormously popular right now. The arguments for the Atkins or Low Carb Diet are largely based on the “hunter-gatherer”, or Paleolithic concept. The idea is that man, since he walked out of the jungles, hunted and – you guessed it – gathered. In fact, Low Carb proponents argue that this is how man flourished.
The research that has poured out of the laboratories and universities has revealed one danger after another with this dietary system. First of all, let’s start with testosterone. Researchers at the University of North Carolina found that a low carb (30%) diet lowered free testosterone by about a third and increased cortisol by about a seventh (15%) when compared to a high carb (60%) diet in intensely trained athletes. This is every guy’s worst endocrinological nightmare. It may seem counterintuitive, but carbs protect your testosterone and keep stress hormones at bay.
One landmark study showed conclusively that a High Protein Diet, similar to the Atkins or Low Carb Diet, greatly decreased blood flow. Furthermore, the authors pointed out that “fibrinogen, Lp (a), and C-RP increased by an average of 14%, 106%, and 61% respectively”. These are systemic inflammatory markers that have been shown to lead to cardiovascular, erectile and auto-immune diseases.
Furthermore, study after study – and I discuss this below – is coming out showing that the Atkins or Low Carb Diet is very damaging long term as well. For example, one 2009 study on mice showed greatly decreased vascular health. The mice had greatly increased arteriosclerosis and the researchers believed that it was because a Low Carb Diet limited the mice’s ability to self-repair their vessels. Another study in the journal Circulation showed “reduced endothelial vasoreactivity”. That means they found the same old curse of saturated fat: it temporarily “hardens” your arteries. Yes, that means less blood flow and, yes, that will likely cause some issues with male erectile strength.
Furthermore, animal studies have revealed that a High Fat Diet, similar to the Atkins Diet, turns off genes used for proper mitochondrial function. This has been verified in many animal studies and this is bad – very, very bad. The researchers in the above study stated that “combined, these results suggest a mechanism whereby HFD [a High Fat Diet] downregulates genes necessary for OXPHOS and mitochondrial biogenesis. These changes mimic those observed in diabetes and insulin resistance and, if sustained, may result in mitochondrial dysfunction in the prediabetic/insulin-resistant state”. In other words, over the long term a High Fat Atkins Diet could lead to dangerous Metabolic Syndrome issues due to mitochondrial dysfunction. And remember that mitochondrial dysfunction is associated with low testosterone as well.
Just as bad, researchers have found that a Atkins (Low Carb) Diet increases cortisol levels by allowing cortisol to stay in one’s system longer. In other words, cortisol levels slowly built up beyond normal because the body did not break it down as quickly. And elevated cortisol is associated with weight gain, neuron death and a host of other ills.
If all of that wasn’t bad enough, another danger centers around meat consumption, which has been found to be bad for the brain. Meat, of course, figures prominently in almost all Atkins or Low Carb Diets and one recent large study with 15,000 participants found increased dementia associated with increased meat consumption. Similarly, another recent large study of Latin American and Asian populations showed that the more meat consumption, the more the dementia. In addition, a 2009 study on rats showed that a high fat diet (55%) impaired both cognition and exercise capacity. The animals essentially became “lazy and stupid”. And many people eating fast food and/or an Atkins or Low Carb Diet approach fat levels of 55%.
A Low Carb diet has also been shown to be much more worse for your mood and outlook as well. Australian scientists placed participants on a Low Fat Diet or Low Carb Diet and, not surprisingly, found that both groups lost an equal amount of weight. However, the low carb group “felt more angry, depressed and confused” than the Low Fat cohort.
Finally, another danger has recently been found with this diet: rats fed a high fat diet developed cholecystokinin (CCK) resistance. Cholecystokinin, or CCK, controls blood sugar production in the liver. A high fat diet limits CCK, leading to overly high CCK levels. Being CCK resistant will very likely prove to be just as bad as insulin resistant and a high fat diet appears to lead to this condition.
Many people are interested in enhancing their exercise performance, endurance, power and so on. The above 2009 study on rats found that animals on a high fat diet could run only about half as far as those on a low fat diet. This is simple chemistry: fat is an inefficient energy source for your muscles.
Stick with the pro-testosterone Mediterranean Diet or Low Fat Diet. Both of these have solid research behind them showing improvements in cardiovascular and cancer outcomes
The Diet Solution Program – Does it Really Work? How Does it Work?
Here’s a very brief idea about the Diet Solution Program. To burn fat effectively, you need to know your metabolic type. In the Diet Solution Program, metabolic type can be divided into 3 categories and each type has its own needs and must-dos. After that, you need to estimate the amount of calories you need to lose or maintain your weight. Once you determine your calories and your metabolic type, you will select the portion or servings of food from a list to create your own meal plan.
The idea is to maintain your blood sugar level in the fat-burning zone so that you could lose weight effectively. The meal plan in the Diet Solution Program is designed in such a way that you do not have a sudden increase and decrease in blood sugar concentration (level). If your blood sugar level grows beyond the normal level (sudden increase), the insulin is created to lower down the amount of sugar in your blood and store them in your body as fat. If your blood sugar level go below the normal level (sudden decrease), you will feel extreme hunger and your body will switch to starvation mode which is lower down your metabolism rate (the rate your body used up energy) and hence making the effort of burning fat harder.
Aside on maintaining the right level of blood sugar level, Isabel’s Diet Solution Program teaches you to maintain a healthy lifestyle by choosing the best possible food and warn you about the danger of some food that you may think it is healthy. By practicing the meal in the program, you will have a well-balanced diet. In other words, you will consume the right amount of nutrition like having enough fibers, proteins, carbohydrate, fat, vitamins, and minerals if you follow the meal plans.
Every program has its strong points as well as points of improvement. Isabel’s Diet Solution Program are strong in the following area:
- Easy to understand manual
- Easy to follow steps to create your personal meal plan
- Consists of many useful and handy facts about nutrition and weight loss
- Focus not only on weight loss but also the art of maintaining great health
- Facts and information are based on studies cited from valid publications and papers.
Points of improvement:
- More common items should be added to the shopping list so that consumer can obtain alternative food if certain products are unavailable.
- A more detailed metabolic typing test should be created to differentiate between Protein, Carb and Mixed metabolic type. Some of the questions looks easy but it really takes detail self analysis to give the correct answer. It would be helpful if a more trivial question or method is presented to identify the metabolic type.
Advise and things you need to get started:
- You do not need to do it all at once. The program still works for you even if you implement each action step one at a time.
- You need to have a measurement cup and a small weighing machine ready to measure the amount of food per serving in the beginning.
The Top Benefits of Ice Cube Diet
Today’s world is marked by evolution and change. The health and fitness world is no an exception. Today’s society places such great focus on keeping healthy and fit that the market has been inundated with seemingly limitless options to do so. However, just because there are many means to end, doesn’t mean that all of them are effective.
The ice cube diet is said to be one of the more effective weight loss solutions currently on the market. The ice cube diet is based on the Hoodia plant from the Kalahari Desert of South Africa. As the story goes, South African hunters would cover large expanses of land in search of game. Long days of hunting would require one to have large supplies of food that would slow their progress. Because of the long and arduous journey, hunters might also be tempted to eat their catch before returning back to camp.
The solution for these South African natives was harnessing the power Hoodia gordonii; conuming the plant to curb their appetite as well as provide themselves with the needed energy to sustain the long hunt. The ice cube diet brings you the power of this plant in the form of fresh frozen Hoodia taken once a day to help regulate appetite and lose weight.
Why Take the Ice Cube Diet?
It is a natural question given the abundance of diets and supplements on the market today, especially those of you who’ve experimented with a heavy sampling without any favorable results. What exactly are the advantages of choosing the ice cube diet?
It’s Made from All Natural Resources
The product is all natural. This means that there are no fillers or chemicals add, so the fear of side effects are minimal or even non-existent. The ice cube is 90 percent fresh hoodia with the remaining 10% being composed of natural lime juice, for flavoring, and water. Additionally, every frozen hoodia cube is made from plants that have been frozen within 24 hours of being harvested to preserve maintain freshness.
It’s easy to maintain.
You only need to take in one cube a day to regulate your appetite and control your cravings. You won’t have to change the foods you eat as your portions and waistline begin to shrink.
The ice cube diet is a unique way to lose weight. You don’t have to go through rigorous exercise regimes nor does not require drastic changes in how and what you eat. All you have to do is take one cube a day, watch your portions and your waistline shrink.