Vegan Dieting - Weight Loss or Lifestyle? |
|
Use caution if you adopt the vegan only lifestyle!
Joel Fuhrman, M.D., board certified, family physician, and specializing in preventing and reversing disease through nutritional methods warns that vitamin B-12 deficiency will manifest over time when on a vegan diet. Read about vitamin B-12 - your life may depend on it! Tests show that deficiencies will occur when living a vegan lifestyle in the U.S. This is due to the plants that we eat today are void of some important vitamins, bacteria, and minerals. Many changes in our lifestyle, added stress, depleted soils, additives and chemicals in our water, air pollutants, all play a role in our ability to receive and process the nutrients necessary for premium health and weight. Another factor is the detoxification that you will go through by eating the vegan diet. When you replace your standard diet with a diet of all raw, living foods you may experience some temporary discomfort due to the body expelling toxins that have built up over time in the tissues of the body. This ranges from mild discomfort for some and extreme discomfort for others. This is a good thing and everyone should detox, but by adding the 15% cooked portion of food the detox process is slowed down and makes it easier for some. Detox explained here! Vegan weight loss
If you follow the vegan diet path for weight loss, tests have shown that you will lose over 4 pounds more in the short term than other weight loss plans. My personal experience on an all vegan diet was losing too much weight! I soon started adding cooked foods to my diet to maintain my ideal weight. I felt better than I had for as long as I can remember but also noticed a lack of energy when exercising. I soon changed my diet to a 15% cooked and 85% raw daily plan. It is inevitable that you will lose weight by following this diet but there are no hard and fast rules or formula that will work for everyone. “There are no two people alike in terms of metabolic and biochemical individuality". Two women who are the same age and weight can have significantly different needs; one may require only 500mg. of vitamin C a day to maintain good health, while the other may need 1,500 mg. or more”.[1] Needless to say it is useless to rely on some figure which is claimed to represent someone’s “average” dietary requirements. See more on the health plan that I adopted. Think about your nutrition needs not the desire of the body. Learn to listen to your body and you will be well on your way to not only weight loss but optimal health for experiencing enormous amounts of energy, fighting off most any disease, and protecting your immune system. It is important that you get a wide variety of nutrients into the body by mixing up the whole, fresh, natural food that we take in. There is a wide array of these natural foods available to us. Your body was created to take care of all the complex chemical processes and things we have only scratched the surface on. We do well if we allow our bodies to do what it was created to do and don't short circuit these processes by placing inferior, altered, denatured foods into the body. Use the balanced approach for weight loss!
Keep in mind these important factors:
God gave us a marvelous body that not only recognizes these unknown substances but also has the ability to utilize them individually and in combinations to provide health to our bodies. It’s up to us to be sure we are providing the living substance for our bodies to function properly. If we are eating dead, processed, unnatural foods, we will pay the high cost through illness and disease. [1] Food & Behavior, Barbara Reed Stitt
|
|