Salad diet - full description
OK, let's start with the salad diet.
Salad diet is based on the simple fact that most of the salads contain less calories than regular meal.
Core ideas of salad diet:
- take less calories that your body burns (i.e. form negative calorie balance);
- you don't have to starve;
- easy to follow
Calories and calorie balance
The calorie is a energy unit, in particular heat. It is used to measure energetic value of foods and drinks. Human body requires a certain amount of energy to function and that energy comes from what we eat and drink. For scientific explanation of calorie please see What exactly is a calorie.
First thing you have to do before starting with salad diet (and any diet in fact) is to find how many calories your body needs per day. That value is called "Daily Calorie Needs" (DCN) (some authors call it maintenance level). Please use our Calorie Calculator to calculate your Daily Calorie Needs.
OK, you calculated your Daily Calorie Needs. You now have a value that represents how much kilocalories your body needs daily. The goal of most diets is to reduce daily taken calories bellow that value. This is called negative calorie balance.
Calorie Balance (CalB) = Daily Calorie Needs - Daily Calories Intake
Calories and Kilocalories
Just to clarify: 1000 calories = 1 kilocalorie (1 kcal)). In most countries it is mandatory food and drink labels to include energetic value statement. Usually values are presented in kcal.
Calories for fat loss
Scientists tells us that 1 pound of fat is equal to 3500 kilocalories, so a daily calorie deficit (negative calorie balance) of 500 kilocalories should result in 1 pound per week fat loss. In reality things don't quite work that efficiently.
Salad diet page 2: Salad diet steps »
