Good health is a product of healthy nutrition, physical exercise and spiritual balance. Learning the correlation between diet and good health may allow the consumer to think about fad diets, weight-loss gimmicks and supplements in an intellectual way. Nutrients, or the lack thereof, trigger functions in the body, including your ability to heal, grow, learn and play. Diets have many goals including better health, weight loss and muscle building. How the diets achieve those goals is vital to understanding its nutritional worth.
Gather Information
Step 1
Visit your doctor. Health-care providers are trained in health and nutrition and can provide information on healthy diets, including those specialized for people with chronic illness. If you suffer a chronic disease such as diabetes or heart disease, a nutrition specialist, such as a dietitian, can help.
Step 2
Question the nutritional value of diets. Fad or trendy diets may indeed cause weight loss -- but they can harm your body by severely limiting the nutrients you consume. A diet that restricts healthy vegetables and whole grains can deplete your body of necessary vitamins and fiber.
Step 3
See through the false claims and draw your own conclusions. Don't be swayed by fabulous claims on labels. Learn to read between the lines by scrutinizing the nutrition facts label. Ask yourself what the diet is encouraging -- diets that focus on a healthy lifestyle such as dietary changes with exercise are the best bet for health.
Step 4
Learn what nutrients your body needs for health. The USDA provides diet and health tips that can be individualized to meet your special needs. Learning how much -- of what -- you should eat is vital to your health. A link to the USDA is provided in the Resource section of this article.
Learn the Types
Step 1
Diet to improve health. These diets may include low-fat, low-sodium and reduced cholesterol food choices. The American Heart Association encourages reducing all three for improved cardiovascular health.
Step 2
Use the glycemic index -- a measurement of the blood sugar impact of each carbohydrate food -- to make healthy food choices throughout the day. Glycemic index diets are aimed toward diabetics or those wishing to lose weight. Similarly, low carbohydrate diets restrict refined carbs such as white breads or starchy vegetables.
Step 3
Reduce the amount of calories you consume or replace meals with shakes or food bars for weight loss. Very low calorie diets reduce caloric intake to as low as 400 per day and require medical supervision to maintain health.
Step 4
Avoid fad diets that promise large amounts of weight loss with minimal energy expenditure. These diets may have you eating one type of food, such as grapefruit, for days on end. This severely limits the amount of nutrition you obtain from food, and the results are usually temporary.
Tips and Warnings
- Most healthy diets will encourage 1 to 2 lbs. of weight loss weekly.
- Children and people who are pregnant, lactating or chronically ill should not diet without talking to a doctor.
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