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Practical Diet

Introduction

The basic of all eating is that you get the right amount of calories for your body to dispense: consuming less energy than your body requires will make your muscle and fat tissue shrink, bulking with extra energy will make you gain fat tissue. If you are of high and muscular stature, you will have to eat plenty more of food than the standard basement-dwelling nerd to keep all that mass functional, lest you lose it. On the other hand, your body metabolism and daily activities also have an impact on your average daily need.

The next general concern of eating is getting the right vital nutrients in healthy balanced intake. Carbohydrates, proteins and fats are all important to you. Forget everything about what you have been told about food pyramid and avoiding fats: it all is more a market trick and populist pseudo science than a notable insight in human dietary needs. Our ancestors did and modern Mediterranean nations still do enjoy their traditional diet greasy and high caloric but both groups have had magnificient health and suffered little from the Western plague of cardiovascular diseases. More likely the cause of the former is due to unhealthy and taxing lifestyle with new artificial food ingredients: we sleep worse, are in worse shape than ever, have stressing commutation and surroundings, and food industry tries to come up with new cheaper alternatives to traditional ingredients, like replacing sugar with aspartame and animal fats with hydrated vegetable fats, both of which have never before been a part of our diet.

Balanced eating is the key. It's silly to go for some claimed miracle diet such as Atkins and with bipolar thinking assert "hydrocarbons bad, proteins good". It's just all wrong; your body needs all the nutrients for healthy metabolism and bodily functions, so things can get wrong if this imbalance continues long. Fats are good, proteins are good, hydrocarbons are good: if they come from natural sources, there's absolutely no reason to religiously avoid any of them.

Short term effects of nutrient imbalance are generally insomnia, weakness, low blood sugar and bad mood. The long term effects can be very serious, causing even degeneration or permanent damage to organs. While these ill effects are hard to get by eating imbalanced amounts of energy providing substances, neglecting the intake of other required substances, namely vitamins and minerals, is much more easy and covert. Your body often has months or years supply of these, so deficiency symptoms won't necessarily come up fast. A rarer but no less serious case is to have much more of the mineral or vitamin than you are supposed to. It's however very hard to get excess amounts of these unless you use supplements (often needless) or eat a limited selection of food.

Eating all-round and organic is the best way to moderate one's health via dietary methods. A good diet is essential for daily well-being, but changing to healthy diet shouldn't be regarded as the unparallelled way to better living; instead you may look for new inspiration for more extensive lifestyle changes in it.

Differences of food growing styles

Over catching is not however the only way for food industry to cause extinction to species but there are many more direct and indirect ways. For example, bananas have largely been bred to a single subspecies with little genetic variety. This is all according to efficiency to breed species to a single mould which gives a high quantity output with low input. Now a single severe fungal infection could effectively wipe out the bananas around the world, thanks to global traffic. Another example could be razing of rain forests in order to set new grazing ground for cattle and new soil for soy beans of which consumption has largely expanded due to diet turning more global and increased demand for cheap cattle fodder.

Modern agriculture is no better: it consumes much of Earth despite of the obscuring low price tag. If it wasn't for cheap energy sources such as oil, we wouldn't have far-away imported foods nor unsustainable, industrial-level fertilizer driven, agriculture.

Current advanced technology has given even more sinister tones to industrial food production in the form of highly lobbied GM products. The basic premise behind endorsing GM is 1) we have the technology and progress is cool 2) it has neat potential. The criticism rises that even if we have the technology, there's still much to learn from genetics and the long term effects of genetic reshuffling, and that this is yet another tedious marketing gimmick: the Jesus food of future which cures all the diseases, nutritional deficiencies, impotence, does the exercise for you, takes your kids to school, washes the dishes, gives your wife orgasms and many more.

These problems culminate yet once again in the most basic error of modernity: lack of real responsible leadership. When genetic tampering, be it of ordinary breeding or artificial implementations, is regulated by greed and ignorance than real competence, we blindly run into actions that will do us more harm than good.

Solutions? Favour food that is organic and natural. Organic is a neat tag because it tells you that the product is both raised nature in particular concern and it employs methods that are essential for sustainable living: no polluting pesticides, no artificial fertilizers and definitely no GM. Another good quality for food items is their locality: it reduces energy spent in transporting the food and possibly even gives you a chance to affect the farm's produce.

Game, gathering berries and mushrooms, and fishing are also great choices when the area is not too polluted.

If you have vim (and resources), you may even think of raising your own food! Nothing should be as rewarding as eating produce from your own little garden. For further information in growing food yourself search the Internet and visit your local library.

Diet moderation and weight control

There are cultural preferences to eating: in some cultures you eat the dinner late in the evening, barely eat anything for breakfast and a light lunch, but still they are alert and energetic throughout the day. This is because body will adapt to different schemes of energy, supposing that they are regular. Even if you consume 80% of your daily energy in a single session, your body will adapt to this and liver insulin will release sugar to blood in a steady pace. (And we wonder why Westerns have such high rates of diabetes -- snacks and snacking keep blood insulin high throughout the day, so no wonder if many of us develop insulin tolerance!) What matters is that you stick to a certain eating habit, snacking is bad, as it will boost your daily spirit and keep the hunger genuinely at bay.

Times have made our parents pretty much abandon the traditional diet which they might have had, so we have a wide range of "alternative dietary conducts" or "ideological diets". Some of these diets have a genuine basis such as Hindus refusing to harm living beings, thus favouring largely vegetarian diet, but many of these are just either a commercial gimmick intended to sell a lifestyle or an ethically renowned manners to boost one's ego. We suggest that you ignore these unhealthy eating trends and stick to the fact that your ancestors lived a healthy life on traditional diet. Eat what is healthy and varied and don't go for the single-minded "meat bad, veggies good" ethically justified diet. Keep it in mind however that many of the products and especially meats tend to be suspiciously produced and such to be avoided.

Good foods to look for:

Generally look for local, fresh and organic alternatives to deep-frozen and industrially produced foods. GM is probably the worst alternative out there, unless you want to grow an extra limb and receive an aggressive tumor.

Fish

If there is just one brand of meat which you shouldn't live without, it's definitely fish. Especially the fatty fish are great due to their high energy content and important omega-3 fatty acids.

Farmed fish is suspicious due to their raising methods and environmental impact they have. You should be able to ask about the fish origin in the meat section. Also note that if you catch fish yourself, there are quite a few areas where there are recommendations to avoid or limit the consumption of certain fish due to high pollutant enrichment in the particular ecosystem.

You may want to check this document for further recommendations.

Fasting

Fasting can be done via several ways: there is juice fasting, one dinner per day fasting, and the traditional water fasting. The duration of fasting also varies, usually from a week to month.

Juice fasting consists of occasionally drinking blended juices out of a variety of vegetables, roots, berries and fruits, but mainly resorting to water when you need to drink. The juices are easy to digest, thus keep body in fasting state while you gain a small amount of energy. If you are going for the water fasting for extend period, you should take care of your body mineral intake: adding a dash of salt to a liter of water or occasionally drinking some mineral water will guarantee that your mineral balance stays healthy. If you go for the juice fast, as always, use moderation: extensive use of certain juices can make changes to body pH or blood protein balance.

Fasting is usually started by intake of sodium sulfate, commonly also known as Glauber's salt. Consuming this salt with water has laxative qualities, i.e. it will make your bowel empty faster. By having an empty bowel you will quicken the transition from feeling hungry to the complete state of fasting. The sensation of hunger can be pressing for a few days but remember that it's all in your head: you won't die. But first and foremost listen to your body. If you are suddenly feeling very sick, there's no point to continue. Fasting isn't supposed to be a method of self-torture but of discipline.

Note that excess burden should be avoided. Some exercise is good, especially if you are getting rid of extra pounds, but it shouldn't be too demanding. Also take care that you have enough warm clothing since while fasting your body will generate less heat.