Topics to cover (Diet)

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Guide to Fiber

Fiber is what we call a chain of sugar molecules our body has trouble digesting that often makes up plant fibers. The recommendation for the average adult male is 30-40g and for the average adult woman 20-30g per day. Insoluble fiber is fiber that doesn't dissolve in water while soluble fiber does. They both have a lot of similar benefits to gut health and feeding our gut microbiome, but soluble fiber (which creates a gel when wet) has more benefit in helping to reduce cholestorol and heart disease, while insoluble fiber draws water into the stool making it easier to pass and reduces risk of colorectal problems.

Calories In Calories Out

Food is energy, and we measure that energy in calories. Energy follows a set of rules, one of those is we can neither create it nor can it disappear. So when we consume more calories than we use, that energy can't disappear we need to do something with it - and we store it as fat on our body. When we consume less calories than we use, we can't create energy to fill that gap we need to get it from somewhere - and we get it from the energy we stored as fat. Our calories in and calories out can be influenced by several factors (ability to absorb your food, lifestyle choices, hormonal imbalances, poor sleep...) but whether we gain or lose fat comes down to the balance of energy in our body.

What Is Moderation

There's a limit to how much of any given thing is healthy for us. This is based on the toxicity of that thing, how well each of our bodies processes it, and the way we prepare it. It can also be relative to the rest of our diet, some things aren't very toxic but if we eat too much of them then we don't leave enough room in the rest of our diet for other things we need. Eating in moderation is the ability to consume something within those healthy constraints, and to not allow something to be an excessive part of our diet.

How to Build Your Diet For Fat Loss

In order to achieve a calorie deficit, most people focus on what they can cut from their diet. But it's important to look at what we can add. Low calorie dense foods are foods that have a low amount of calories in a high amount of volume of food. These are foods that are usually high in water or fiber content. By adding low calorie dense foods into your meals, you will feel full faster with low calories. By combining this with removing things like extra oils, using smaller portion sizes, or other methods of lowering calories we can make meals that still make us feel full with lower calories. Cooking more vegetables into a dish or ordering more veggies on your plate is the simplest form of this.

How to Build Your Diet For Weight Gain

Unlike with fat loss, when looking to gain weight you want to look at calorie dense foods. These are foods that pack a lot of calories into a small amount of food, allowing you to get more calories in without feeling full. You also want to look at foods that digest faster; such as simple sugars, simple starches, and liquid calories. These absorb in your GI tract faster so you feel less satiated and are inclined to eat more. For example, it's easier to consume orange juice than it is to consume an orange, it's easier to consume white rice than brown rice.

Types of Diets

You'll find a multitude of different diets all over social media. Keto, fasting, atkins, carnivore... the list goes on. All diets are a form of calorie restriction in one way or another. Carnivore and keto restrict you from eating calories in the form of carbs. Atkins restricts you based on their scoring chart. Fasting restricts you based on time - you can only consume calories during a certain time window. Because they are all calorie restriction they all can work - but only if that diet suits you. If you don't enjoy eating keto it's not going to work for you, you're going to have a hard time restricting the calories or you aren't going to be able to sustain it. Just because a diet worked for someone else doesn't mean it'll work for you, but they do all have the potential to work because they're all just ways to restrict calories.

LDL Cholesterol & Saturated Fat

Low-Density Lipoproteins are little packages in your blood that carry fats like cholesterol to your cells. This is normally an important body function. Just like how with insulin if we let the levels get higher than we're using it causes us problems, if LDL gets too high the fat particles will start to stay in the bloodstream and settle as plaque build up in our arteries. Saturated fat increases LDL circulation by interfering with the LDL receptors in the liver.