Anti-Aging Strategies

Most desperation dieters do a couple of very predictable things. First, they radically reduce the quantity of food they eat. Second, they go on a crusade to eliminate fat. Although cutting down on the fat may be good if kept within rational bounds, cutting it out entirely is not only unnecessary but potentially unsafe, especially among children (don't forget essential fatty acids).

We certainly don't require nearly as much fatcertainly not as much as the average American consumesbut we do need to eat a basic minimum of the so-called essential fats required to maintain cell or nerve membrane synthesis. Cholesterol, believe it or not, is important for the production of steroids, which are so important in the manufacturing of hormones. Fats (including cholesterol) are components of the myelin that is a critical part of your nerve sheaths. Lipids (fats) are therefore essential to the health of your brain and the senses linking you to the outside world. That devil cholesterol also turns out to be an important part of the structure of your cell walls as well as a major component of your sex hormones.

Nevertheless, fat and cholesterol are prime suspects for causing heart disease. Left unmetabolized, cholesterol will deposit itself all over the circulatory system, especially in the coronary arteries that service your heart. That, as we all know, can be bad, very bad.

Our bodies can also manufacture cholesterol. Eating all those nice new cholesterol-free foods can be great, but not all that useful if you happen to be someone who just happens to produce too much cholesterol. Uncontrolled consumption of other fats, protein, or carbohydrate in large quantities still leads to obesity, which, although not as serious a direct cardiac risk factor, may predispose you to other cardiac risk factors such as hypertension or diabetes.

A sedentary body can be an invitation to heart disease. An active, fit body should be able to store fats as high-density lipids, which are like paratroopers at the door, helmets on, clipped in, and ready to jump into the bloodstream not only as nutrients to reinforce tired active muscles but also as protection against lipid plaques, the silent killers of myocardial infarction or stroke.

We are conditioned by habit, heredity, culture, and even fate to like fats. If you cut out all the oil (fat) that titillates hungry taste buds, your food just doesn't seem to slide down as smoothly. You could run the risk of becoming one of those ascetics who eat to live rather than live to eat. Reducing excess animal fat, simple sugars, and protein (the surplus of which is converted to fat) is one way to control so-called android obesity experienced by guys in their forties with those characteristic love handles around their waists.