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Sunday, January 1, 2012

Coconut Oil Diet - Is It Healthy?

Thousands of people are getting wonderful results just by including coconut oil into their diets. It has been acknowledged as an exceptional medium helping people lose weight. Furthermore, its qualities improve the immune functions of the body; prevent heart disease, diabetes, cancer and much more. It contains a great number of medium chained triglycerides (mcts). This is a saturated fat with unique qualities, which is carried directly to the liver after consumption. Other types of fat first enter the bloodstream and are circulated in the body before reaching the liver. This gives these simple fats more opportunity to be stored as fat in the body. Mcts are immediately burned for energy and are not stored as body fat.

Because coconut oil has a large percentage of saturated fats, it has been shunned for years as a part of any diet. As a saturated fat, nutritionists were taught to believe that it was bad for your cholesterol. This was really sad, as it was eventually proved to be a very healthy type of oil.

Various studies during recent years have also proven that coconut oil is among the safest and most stable oils for cooking. It is neutral oil filled with omega 3 fatty acids.

Dieting, Per Se Does Not Work.

Fashion diets with extremely low-calorie counts, will cause quick weight loss, burning muscle and getting rid of lots of water quickly. However, once your body realizes what is happening to it, it will start storing fat, and the craving will start! You will start eating a lot of sugar and (unhealthy) high-carbohydrate foods. You know it is wrong, but you cannot help it as it is the body's natural defense mechanism to keep it from starving and you will start gaining weight again. You are now in the so-called yo-yo diet cycle.

The coconut oil diet was inspired from cultures where people's eating habits were formed over hundreds of years without any concern about sugar, carbohydrate or protein content. Because of the abundance of coconut oil in these countries, coconut oil formed a large part of their diet, which also included some dairy products, fish, meat and vegetables. The coconut was used in many forms such as; cooking oil, fresh grated coconut to make sauces, curries and pastes.



The coconut oil diet is very similar to a very well-known low-carbohydrate diet, with some coconut oil variations added as the main source of fat. It follows that it will be very effective in loosing weight while enhancing the function of the thyroid.

While this diet is also a low-carbohydrate, no sugar type of diet, it emphasizes foods rich in protein like red meat, pork, chicken, eggs, cheese and nuts. The diet starts with a very strict induction phase. This will help to change your body's carbohydrate-burning metabolism over to a fat burning metabolism (your body fat!). This will stabilize your blood sugar level and halt a myriad other symptoms indicative of unstable blood sugar such as fatigue, mood swings, etc. This induction phase lasts a maximum of fourteen days, after which you will already notice a significant loss in weight.

There is much more to the induction phase than this simplified version demonstrates, but suffice it to say this is an exceptionally important part of the diet. It primarily changes your body chemistry, teaching it to obtain its energy mainly from the fats you ingest.

Furthermore, the induction phase of the coconut oil diet allows no deviation from the recommended foods. It stresses low carbohydrate content with two to three spoons of coconut oil added to all meals. The next phase, over a period of four to five weeks, focuses on detoxification of the colon and other organs of the body. The last two phases are for slow reintroduction of carbohydrates and weight maintenance

I have been using a low-carbohydrate "diet" for many years(it is more than a diet, it is a lasting change in your eating habits!) and I am on a "lifetime maintenance plan" since that first completion of my course. My weight remains constant within a few pounds and at 70 I am as healthy as a frog in a pond! I can, therefore, positively and confidently recommend this way of eating to you



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6742132

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