Now that we are reaching the end of this program, I want to give you a few tips on how to do your own research when it comes to health and dieting. Since there's so many new diet trends popping up each year, I will never be able to analyze each and every single one. So it's important you know how to do this yourself. In this lesson, I basically outline my thought process when I stumble across a new diet or new piece of dieting advice that I haven't seen before. I'm sure you will benefit from this and it will help you to sort through all the information available on the internet a lot faster. So the first thing I do is look at the diet and see how it stands in regards to the most important dieting principles I outlined in the first section of this program.
So this includes things like calorie balance, macronutrients, etc. What I'm looking for is whether the diet is in line with these principles and incorporates them. If so, then at least I know that the general design of the diet makes sense can continue from there. If, however, the diet violates these dieting principles, and that's a huge red flag. For example, there are many diets that promise to help you lose weight simply by eating certain foods without ever watching your calories. Now these foods are usually healthy and good for you, which is great, but it still doesn't alleviate you from the fact that you have to create a negative calorie balance to lose weight.
If a certain diet hides this Heck, I usually know that they're trying to market to uninformed customers. Next, I checked the promises the diet mates. Now big promises aren't automatically bad. After all, you can make pretty drastic changes to your body if you diet and exercise correctly. Instead, what I'm looking for are unrealistic promises like drink a glass of water early in the morning and you will lose fat like crazy or this one fruit will make weight loss a breeze. Most times these claims are based on a grain of truth which is completely blown out of proportion to again market to uninformed consumers.
If however, a diet passes this test, I then check whether it is overly complicated or makes absolute assumptions. One example would be low fat diets that outright condemn all kinds of fats, no matter if there is saturated, unsaturated, or trans fats. The same applies to low carb diets. Of course, what you also have to understand is that dieting is a highly individual subject. So yeah, there will be people who have problems digesting carbs and fats, but that still doesn't mean everyone should avoid them. overly complicated diets include diets where you have to eat specific foods at specific times of the day, or avoid specific foods at specific times of the day.
Unless of course you like this kind of strictness, it's usually not necessary and doesn't have any added benefits. Last but not least, what I do is check trusted sources and research done on the diet. There is so much contradictory information out there. So finding trustworthy sources that look into all the studies and carefully weigh up and reference the data can be difficult. But fortunately, there are still some sources that I personally trust and have learned from a lot. In my opinion, the best platform is exam.com, which publishes regular summaries of the most important research on Fitness, Health and Nutrition.
Examine also has a supplement guide, which is literally 1000 pages long, and lists all the most important supplements and research done on them. Much of the content of this course is based on this guide, and it was by far the best nutrition resource I ever bought. I will link their website in the bonus lecture, so be sure to check it out. And that's it. If you follow these steps, you will notice that many of today's diets are either completely overhyped or way too complicated. Stick to the simple principles are laid out in this program and you will see results Good luck.