The DASH Diet Plan

It is not a mystery to all of us that being overweight or obese has too many risks for health complications. The threat of obesity became global because of different bad lifestyles and unhealthy eating.

Since the inception of fast food chains, the lures of television and the never ending work schedules and many others, the quality of human health declined significantly for the last decades. Diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, stroke, cancer, high blood pressure and other illnesses all plagued the human race because of the said factors.

But there is one kind of diet that aims to lower these health risks and that is DASH Diet. Yes, another fad diet but a little more health-friendly than any other diets I have discussed in this site. If you want to learn the benefits of this kind of diet, read on until the end and you will know how it can help you lose weight.

dash diet planDASH is an abbreviation for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. This diet is highly regarded and promoted by many institutions including National Institutes of Health (NIH), American Heart Association, US Department of Agriculture and many others. While DASH seems mainly for hypertension treatment or prevention, it is more than that actually.

DASH diet is based on NIH studies which researches on three kinds of dietary programs and their corresponding results. The diet is mainly consists of more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low fat or non-fat dairy products, nuts and beans. The plan is to follow a healthy eating habit, giving alternative solutions to junk foods and prevents processed foods.

In a book published by National Institutes of Health entitled “Your Guide to Lowering your Blood Pressure with DASH“, it details every nutritional facts about different food items that are popular today and their corresponding alternatives. It also provides sample meal plans together with its nutritional values.

Based on that plan, it is well formulated to help you deal with high blood pressure thru controlled dieting plan. Reports shows that DASH significantly reduced systolic blood pressure by 6 mm Hg and diastolic blood pressure by 3 mm. Pre-hypertensive patients can highly benefit from this diet plan.

If you are already hypertensive, you can drop both your systolic and diastolic levels by 11 and 6 respectively. As you can see on the eating plan above, the calorie intake only ranges from 1,600 to 3,100 calories per day, enough to maintain a healthy blood pressure without any changes in body weight.

While this diet is particularly more focused on preventing and treatment of high blood pressure, its official book entitled “The DASH Diet Action Plan” is more driven for weight loss and health improvement. Positive reports have been have been given to DASH diet with regards to its weight loss effectiveness.

Like any other diets that limits protein and other food groups, DASH is full of fruits and vegetables with balanced amounts of protein for right weight loss formula. Many practitioners have been satisfied with DASH as it doesn’t require any fasting or cleansing regimens that many dieting program requires.

DASH diet is not just for weight loss but specifically for people with high blood pressure. The diet is low in salt, fat and lots of whole grain foods which is ideal for lowering blood cholesterol which constitutes to a healthy heart. It is high in fiber, rich in potassium, calcium and magnesium. Research even shows that this diet also reduce your risk of stroke as well as kidney stones.

So DASH diet is designed for long term use unlike other diets that only provides short term health and fitness improvement. It is also ideal to practice for all family members as the diet emphasizes a healthy eating program.

Over all, DASH diet passed all critics reviews and more people trusts this type of program. Though there are minimal negative complaints such as limited recipes and other non-significant comments, DASH diet over ruled all these shortcomings by its effectiveness on weight loss and hypertension treatment.

You can follow DASH Diet by getting your own copy of The DASH Diet Action Plan book. Otherwise, if you are just looking for dieting program that are specifically for weight loss, then I advise that you try Amanda Hamilton’s Diet Secrets. By subscribing to her free trial below, you can have a personalized dieting program specifically suitable for your own body requirements.