With all the health-related information available on the internet and our social grapevine, we have become more aware about our physical fitness, and the importance of exercise and a proper diet. It has become very easy to search and follow one of the many diet plans and tips available on the internet, which you may be tempted to do either when you think you are suffering from a health condition, or when you are just being health conscious.
But do you know that not all diet-related advice on the internet is good for you? Essentially, the effectiveness of any diet you choose is highly codependent on a long list of factors including genetics, height, weight, fat ratio, gender, and race. Experts believe that the main reason due to which such tips are so convincing is that they build out of a personal anecdote coming from an unknown yet credible-sounding individual, or of a family that is said to have been benefiting from it, either of which may or may not be real.
While it is not advisable to follow every health or diet related tip you come across, it is not practical to verify every tip either. Hence, the following tips will help you maneuver your way through the dense forest of diet tips on the internet.
Tips Regarding Your Metabolism
This is one of the most sought-after tips category and demands to be debunked before any other. Let’s get one thing straight: there is nothing you can consume that will boost your metabolism or automatically burn fat, period. Metabolism and fat burn are directly related to breathing and normal functions of the body.
The only way to increase the speed of both is to indulge in any activity that increases your rate of breathing, such as cardio. This means that exercise or an active lifestyle is the only way to go. You should safely ignore all those tips promising metabolism boost because they are worthless. There is a long list of products that will claim to boost metabolism and that they are backed by research, but the effect is so minimal that you should not expect any real benefit from them.
Tips on Calculating Weight Loss
Since weight loss is very subjective and dependent on a wide range of factors, you should never consider any advice that tries to give you a calculated figure about how much you will lose after a certain period of time.
If you believe in those calculations and develop an expectation accordingly, then you will be disappointed by the results, and funnily enough that same source will tell you what we are about to tell you: genetic differences, stress levels, lifestyle, gender and even factors as supposedly irrelevant as weather conditions and as uncontrollable as ethnicity can materially influence the outcome of your weight loss efforts. You can ask a mathematician on how complex that equation can be if it involves all these factors.
Tips About Avoiding Certain Foods
While we admit that some foods are almost always detrimental to your health, such as white sugar, it is never recommended to eliminate a food that contains an essential element of an overall healthy diet. For example, you cannot eliminate sugar, lectins, lactose, and gluten altogether from your diet, unless of course you have an allergy.
These often-criticized foods may not be good for physical well-being but they may be beneficial or even essential for psychological well-being. Sugar has been known to make people feel good about themselves, hence having it in times of distress may prove to be of a net benefit to you.
Tips Ensuring Compensation Through Superfoods
Superfoods are great for health. However, that being said, neither can they be used as a reconciliation for unhealthy eating habits and addictions nor they magically convert all the unhealthy food you consume into healthy one. It is very unfortunate that these tips have made their way into the mainstream.
For example, turmeric, one of the most famous superfoods, can cause nausea and even affect the rhythm of our heartbeat when ingested without precautions. Superfoods are not for everyone either. Consuming turmeric on a daily basis can worsen gallbladder issues, and also drastically decrease blood sugar levels in diabetic people beyond safe levels.