The One-Rule Diet

Many nutrition and weight-loss experts have noted that one reason most diets fail is that they are difficult to sustain over long periods of time. They either require the dieter to adhere to restrictive rules or they are too complex, or both. Could there be an effective diet for health and weight management that is based on just one simple rule and doesn’t take inhuman levels of restraint to execute?

If so, there is only one viable candidate for that one rule: eat the recommended number of fruits and vegetables every day. The rest is up to you. In case you don’t know, the current government recommendation for fruit and vegetable consumption is seven total servings of per day for women and nine for men. The average American eats fewer than three servings of fruits and vegetables combined each day. If you know anything about just how nourishing fruits and vegetables are, you can easily see that by putting himself on the “one-rule diet”, the average American would take a great leap forward in the overall quality of his diet, even if he continued to get his remaining daily calories from less wholesome sources.

Recent research indicates that increasing fruit and vegetable intake facilitates weight loss, as well, even when total calories are not restricted. For example, a Penn State study compared the effects of two diets—low fat and low fat with increased vegetable consumption—on weight over a six-month period. The subjects who increased their vegetable intake lost almost 30 percent more weight, on average. Fruits and vegetables promote weight loss because they are packed with non-caloric water and fiber, so you can eat large volumes of them and avoid hunger with fewer calories.

The psychological component of diet is not to be underestimated. Most diets can be effective for those who continue to follow all the rules, but the more rules a diet has, and the stricter they are, the harder it is to sustain. A diet that allows you to eat whatever else you want, as long as you eat seven to nine total servings of fruits and vegetables daily, may not be the perfect diet, but the perfect diet is too much to ask of most people. Even though a majority of us have gotten out of the habit of including fruits and vegetables in every meal (and snack), making the small changes necessary to increase our intake of fruits and vegetables to seven to nine total servings daily would not be difficult, especially knowing that there’s nothing else to think about.

How much is a serving? One small apple, a side salad, and an 8-ounce glass of orange juice are three examples. See? You’re already almost halfway there!

 

Nutrition article courtesy of PacificHealth Laboratories, makers of nutrition tools such as Accelerade, Accel Gel, Endurox R4, Endurox Excel and much more. For product information or to purchase products, please visit www.pacifichealthlabs.com.