We Celebrate National Diet Month!

December and all it's Traditional Holiday Foods have come to an end and National Diet Month takes it's rightful place. Yes January is the time when everyone pulls out the scales, takes a deep breath and buckles down to dieting in hopes of getting rid of weight gained over the holiday season.

January means the isles that once held holiday candy and chocolates have now been stocked to the hilt with diet foods and diet aids. Why you ask? Because it's diet season and when it's diet season it's National Diet Month. Yes people all over the world will be drinking diet shakes and munching on diet bars. Grocery stores will be selling out of chicken breast and lettuce. Your local Rite Aids and CVS will be saleing boxes and boxes of diet pills. And last but not least; everyone and their brother will be signing up for gym membership.

Yes the month of January is all about diets so enjoy it while you can because come the month of February the shelves will again be stocked with snack foods and party ideas to prepare for Super Bowl Sunday.

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Have you decided it's time to burn off those holiday pounds?

If so we have a few articles to help you get the job done.

• How to lose weight fast

• Cabbage Soup Diet

• How to Drink more water everyday

• How to eat healthy over the holidays

• What are Fad Diets

• Vegetarian Cuisine

• Types of Soup

• The Vegan Diet

• What is Fruitarianism?

• What is Lacto-ovo vegetarianism?

• Vegan Food Substitutions

TIPS

1) - Start A Food Diary.

A July 2008 study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, showed dieters who keep a daily food diary (or diet journal) of what they eat lose twice as much weight as those who do not. The researchers concluded, "It seems that the simple act of writing down what you eat encourages people to consume fewer calories." Diet journaling software and websites have become popular to help people track calorie consumption, calorie burning, weight loss goals, and nutritional balance.

2) - Stimulants

Stimulants such as ephedrine, green tea, caffeine or synephrine work to increase the basal metabolic rate.

Warnings

Diuretics

Diuretics induce weight loss through the excretion of water. These medications or herbs will reduce overall body weight, but will have no effect on an individual's body fat. Diuretics can thicken the blood, cause cramping, kidney and liver damage. In a single report, the death of Jacqueline Henson was found to be related to swelling in her brain, which was associated with excessive water consumption over a short period of time, while she was on a special water diet.

Dangers of fasting

Lengthy fasting can be dangerous due to the risk of malnutrition and should be carried out under medical supervision. During prolonged fasting or very low calorie diets the reduction of blood glucose, the preferred energy source of the brain, causes the body to deplete its glycogen stores. Once glycogen is depleted the body begins to fuel the brain using ketones, while also metabolize body protein (including but not limited to skeletal muscle) to be used to synthesize sugars for use as energy by the rest of the body. Most experts believe that a prolonged fast can lead to muscle wasting although some dispute this. The use of short-term fasting, or various forms of intermittent fasting have been used as a form of dieting to circumvent this issue.

Resources: This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses some material from Wikipedia/article dieting/and other related pages. Top Photo: stock