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| Diet Plans & Weight Loss Products |
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The concept of dieting and
how many calories to lose weight one should eat is a fairly new one.
For most of human history, it was unusual for anyone other than the very wealthy to be overweight. During this period, fat was desirable.
However, the eventual distribution of wealth changed all that. Many people suddenly had food and drink available in abundance.
As the human body had evolved to store fat effectively, the pounds began to pile on and the need for weight loss products eventually became very real. |
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History of Diet Plans
The first diet book, published in 1862, was actually based on a low carbohydrate diet, a predecessor of the Atkins meal plans. Written by William Banting, an Englishman who had lost fifty pounds in one year based on a doctor's advice, this “Letter on Corpulence Addressed to the Public” was extremely popular, not just in the English-speaking countries but across the world.
Prior to 1918, the calorie was merely a term used in the scientific world, not by everyday people discussing nutrition. But the first steps towards what would become the
Jenny Craig diet and other low calorie plans were taken when a doctor from California, Lulu Hunt Peters, suggested counting the calories in food as a way to aid in weight loss. Today, with so many diets around, from the Sonoma diet to specially formulated diet plans for teens, this seems like a very simple concept. However, at the time, it was a revolutionary idea. The doctor's book, "Diet and Health with a Key to the Calories" was a huge hit with the general public, as it was one of the first truly scientific approaches to weight loss. Indeed, it is still an influential work to this day.
More recently, continuing into modern day, there has been a lot of focus on the idea that eating foods in specific combinations is really how to lose weight fast. The idea is that certain foods can help alter the fatty properties of other foods in order to prevent you from absorbing that fat and putting on weight. Although there is no scientific evidence to support this idea as of yet, it remains a popular dieting trend.
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