Elaine

Now, for the first time in the history of medical science, a substance has been found and isolated about which it is possible to say: If you lay the foundation of your slimming diet on this food you should lose weight more quickly and easily than on a diet based on the same quantity of any other foods.

A very good diet is one which has all the elemental vital nutrients proportioned correctly.

No single food contains all the elemental nutrients we need. Different foods contain different essential nutrients. We therefore need to consume a wide variety of foods so that we obtain all the basic basic nutrients.

In the west, large nutrient deficiencies are usually never seen. Our problem is that we tend to consume too much of some essential essential nutrients and not enough of others. This imbalance can lead to a number of diet-related diseases. Guidelines on good eating suggest that we consume the right amount of energy (calories) to keep us at the correct weight, eat less fat (particularly saturated fat), consume more fibre and eat less sodium (salt) and sugar.

SO... WHAT SHOULD WE EAT?

In the past, many pronouncements have been made saying that "Including some particular foods in a reducing diet would specifically help overweight people to shed weight more quickly and effectively". Grapefruit was a classic example. Grapefruit meals were the rage for years. More recently, in an American bestseller, pineapple, had magical weight-shedding properties. Unfortunately, all these pronouncements in the past were based on fiction rather than fact certainly not on any established medical fact! Apart from caffeine (which does have a small effect in speeding up the metabolism) no one item we eat or drink has been by scientific methods to have any realistic effect in speeding away our surplus fat. Weight loss depends entirely on the calories we don't consume.

The substance is dietary fibre. Now its possible to cut your calorie consumption and at the same time increase your consumption of dietary fibre from the unrefined cereal foods and the fruits and vegetables which provide it.

If you follow a high-fibre diet you should find that you are more satisfied on less calories. And more of the calories that go into your mouth will, to put it bluntly, go straight through and down the lavatory.

Of course, the fewer calories the body uses from food the more it must pull from from your surplus body fat, so this adds up to faster weight loss.

Another simple definition which will appeal to everyone who has ever tried to slim: More weight loss for less will power!

When people consume high-fibre diets they excrete more calories in their stools (faeces). In several experiments, scientists have engaged in the task of evaluating the stools of those following high-fibre meals and have found that the calories excreted are measurably greater in number than the calories excreted by those on the normal, varied Western meals, rich in refined carbohydrate foods or, indeed, on any other pattern of eating. Tests conclude that the increased calorie content of the faeces amounts to nearly ten per cent when people follow high-fibre diets.

Suffice it to say, those calories which are being flushed away are not being used by the body which means that the body is having to use more of its own surplus fat to combine in for them. So on a 1,000 calorie high-fibre diet the body is going to shed weight more quickly than on a normal 1,000 calorie diet of varied food or on any other 1,000 calorie diet.

Before the high-fibre research findings it was concluded that weight loss depended entirely on the number of calories consumed compared with the number removed by the body. Now we have to factor in another addition to this simple statement....

Weight loss depends on the number and the source of calories eaten. The rate of weight loss will be influenced not only by the amount you consume, in terms of calories, but also by which foods you choose to make up that calorie intake.

In recent years the evidence for the health benefits of fibre, or roughage as it used to be called, has grown so strong that it has filtered through from the medical journals and is now well known to the British and American public.

Following is an example of a breakfast recipe that should add a little variety to that all important meal, as well as supplying important vitamins, minerals, enzymes and fiber. (Thanks to: Rebecca Prescott who runs a natural health website that includes articles on green tea weight loss and metabolism, cla for weight loss and whether it works, and reviews of Dr Atkins diet, and the zone diet.)

Summer Special Salad (Good for Breakfast, lunch or dinner) Serves 4. Preparation time - 20 minutes.

Ingredients
* Water melon - 1 (medium size)
* Tomato - kg
* Celery - 20 gram
* Orange -4
* Grapes -100 gram
* Pineapple (chopped) - 1 cup
* Raisins - 12
* Salt and pepper - to taste

Salad Dressing
* Salad oil - 6 tsp
* Mustard -2tsp
* Chopped onion - 2
* Pepper - 2tsp
* Sugar -1 tsp

Blend all the ingredients for the salad dressing in a mixer.

Preparation

Chop all the fruits and vegetables. Take the pulp out of the watermelon and put all the chopped fruits and tomatoes into the outer covering of the watermelon. Pour the salad dressing on top. Garnish with raisins. Serve chilled.

Eating fruit and vegetables raw gives you hundreds of of their vitamins lost from cooking processes. It also means you get enzymes which are great for helping the digestive process. Watermelon is rich in vitamin C and is also one of the few sources of lycopene, others being tomatoes, red grapefruit and guava. Lycopene is a particularly effective antioxidant.

If you want to find out the foods, recipes and supplements that will add to your hgh Fiber Diet For Weight Loss search our pages at: http://www.meds.articlecontentsite.com/supplements