This entry was posted on Thursday, June 14th, 2007 at 5:12 pm and is filed under Diet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
What is it?
In basic terms this diet consists of reversing what is considered the “norm” of our daily nutritional intake. This means that the normal order of a small breakfast followed by medium to large lunch and finished off with a large dinner is reversed and becomes a large breakfast followed by a medium to large lunch and finished off with a small dinner.
Why?
If you are a regular reader then you will be up-to-date on our opinions of diets and what is healthy. You will also be aware of our mantra that is: “eat for what you are about to do”. Bearing that in mind it should be obvious why the reverse diet has had so many success stories (allegedly, as we take all such reports with a pinch of salt – Beeble).
If we eat in the standard way then our bodies are working in ‘recovery mode’ (i.e. eating after we have been active - Beeble) and therefore are more likely to store energy as body fat (the body’s form of stored energy – Beeble) for the future. If we eat the food prior to an activity, to give us energy, then we are preparing our body and giving it the nutrients it needs in advance. This means that our bodies are much more likely to use all the energy from the food and not store any as body fat.
Beeble’s Opinion
In all honesty when we read about this diet we were a little bit annoyed as it seems there can’t be a single piece of advice that is safe from the branding train.
They call it ‘The Reverse Diet’ whilst professionals refer to it as a sensible eating plan. But I think that the reverse diet plan aficionados have missed the point. They say just by eating in this form that you can lose weight and as a change to normal eating patterns they are probably right. However by having a very large breakfast you could be wasting a lot of the nutrients you could have benefited from. It would be much better to break the reverse diet’s breakfast down into a good size breakfast and a mid morning snack. This boosts your chances of gaining as many of the nutrients from the food as possible, naturally presuming that you are consuming healthy food. Also adding a mid afternoon snack is very beneficial as it helps to give you a strong level of energy throughout the day. This is where the GI (Glycaemic Index) diet can come in useful as well to help select foods that will give you a constant energy source rather than a quick energy boost.
Summary
At the end of the day like all branded diet fads it has some very good ideas but like others is desperately incomplete. It is a pattern of good eating but needs to be combined with other dietary ideas to make a good complete eating plan. It focuses on losing weight when really we should be focusing on healthy eating with the very beneficial side effect of losing weight. If we feed our bodies every nutrient it needs to complete its daily tasks and no more then we create a very healthy strong body and any excess fat will be reduced. Too many people look for the miracle cure or quick fix when perhaps it has taken a lifetime to put the weight on. It would be much better for people to realise this and make healthy choices.
I realise that I am probably fighting a losing battle as we all would rather listen to the person that is selling fat loss in a month, week or day rather than the guy who is telling people that a lifetime of bad habits is going to take years to recover from. At least I get people thinking a bit and those will be the people that make the changes for the right reason and change their habits for a lifestyle change that really can last a lifetime.
Avoid the Quick-Fix Solutions
I hope that I haven’t disheartened too many people with this. Remember that the diet and fitness industry is a multi-billion pound machine that contains many companies looking for a slice of the action. A high percentage of these companies play on our weaknesses by offering the best and quickest solutions without considering individual needs and often knowing that their plan has little real long term benefit.
My advice, as always, is that if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is. Keep reading and learning about the body, food and exercise; by doing this you are able to make educated judgements for your own well-being. Good luck to everyone trying to make a lifestyle change.
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