Battling Obesity

In order to optimize your health a good diet is essential. But, with all the fad diets around it can be difficult to know what is ‘good’. Nutrition science to the rescue! Though some things are still controversial, numerous studies reinforce the following basic information.

A healthy diet requires not just items from the four basic food groups, but in the proper proportion. The average person will need about 2000-2500 calories (sometimes more for larger men, less for women and those looking for rapid weight loss). About 50% of those calories should come in the form of carbohydrates, with 30% from fats (yes, fat is good!) and 20% from proteins.

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Dieters often concentrate on calorie counting. That’s wise, given that the basic equation of weight loss will always remain true: more calories consumed than used - leads to weight gain. But that statement makes it sound as if a calorie is something you eat and if you ate fewer you would lose weight. That is not quite accurate.

In simplest terms, a calorie is a measure of energy. In science, the unit that measures it is the calorie, cal. But because the amount in food is typically so large, the food calorie is actually a thousand of those or kcal (kilocalories). Food calories are sometimes denoted with a capital C to make the difference clear.

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Nearly everyone thinks that dieting would be a good idea. For many, it is. A recent study showed that the average American now consumes about 22% more calories than those of only a generation ago. With that, it isn’t hard to see why obesity could be a problem.

But dieting is not without risks, especially in an age when so many fad diets clamor for attention. The desire to lose weight rapidly can lead to health problems that outweigh the benefits of dieting. Rapid weight-loss dieting in particular can lead to a ‘rebound’, defeating the purpose in the first place.

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Diet and supplement fads come and go. But one compound that is recently much in the news is very likely to stay for the long haul: omega-3 fatty acids. The reasons are that ample research shows that these are essential to a wide range of functions, and also help reduce the odds and severity of an equally wide range of problems.

But, unlike cholesterol, the body doesn’t manufacture its own. It has to be gained from the diet.

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