Posts tagged health

In other articles, I have talked about the benefits of the alkaline diet for boosting your energy level and preventing or even resolving chronic health problems, including osteoporosis and kidney stones. This time, I would like to say a few words about losing weight, a topic of concern to many people as obesity becomes a worldwide epidemic.

Before we can judge whether or not the alkaline diet in particular is an effective way to lose weight, we need to know a few things about weight loss in general. Once we understand the big picture, we will have a standard by which to assess the alkaline diet. In the end, all diets boil down to two basic approaches. You can either count calories, or you can try to avoid certain types of foods, like carbs, meat, or refined sugar. Both ways can work, and when they do, it’s for the same reason — they cause you to consume fewer calories than you burn.

In a way, it doesn’t matter whether you follow the alkaline diet, the South Beach Diet, or the cookie diet — to lose weight, you need to consume fewer calories than you take in. Therefore, the question we need to ask is how well the alkaline diet will help you to reduce your caloric intake.

Unfortunately, there is no cut-and-dried answer to this question. On the positive side, the alkaline diet encourages you to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables, foods that are rich in fiber and complex carbs, but low in fat and sugar. This nutritional profile makes these foods ideally suited for anyone who wants to lose weight.

On the other hand, weight loss is not an inevitable result on the alkaline diet. Some alkaline foods are high in calories, such as certain nuts and seeds. If you go hog wild on these foods, you could theoretically maintain the same weight, or even gain weight on an alkaline diet. As in many areas of life, moderation is important.