Gyms and health clubs are proliferating everywhere as a result of our increased desire to be fit and to lead a healthier lifestyle.

But just as essential to physical fitness is diet-related fitness. You will find it much harder to develop a healthy, strong body without a proper nutritional diet. Diet for fitness provides the proper nutrition we need to restore muscle cells after a physical workout.

The problem is which diet for fitness to follow? Should you do a Weight Watchers style of eating? Or maybe low carbohydrate? Or maybe a meal plan chock full of protein? Or should you go vegetarian? There seem to be as many diet plans as there are stars in the sky. A person could go crazy trying to figure out how to eat healthy.

However, the largest diet study in the world was recently released by researchers at the Faculty of Life Sciences (LIFE), University of Copenhagen.

The diet study involved eight European countries including Denmark, the united Kingdom, the Netherlands, Greece (Crete), spain, Germany, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic.

In the large-scale randomized diet study, termed Diogenes, 772 families took part. The group was made up of 938 adult family members and 827 children.

The results of the study show that if you want to lose weight and feel healthier you should consume a diet for fitness that is high in lean protein, beans and dairy products that are low in fat. Also, you should eat very little highly refined starches such as white bread and white rice.

More importantly, with this type of diet counting calories is not necessary for most people. Dieters can eat until they are full – all without gaining weight.

Does this mean you have to give up the foods you love like pizza, pasta, bread, cake, cookies and other rich desserts? No. What is means is that you should cut back on the amounts you consume, especially if you are overweight.

If you really want to lose weight in such a way that you can see results in a short time, then you need to temporarily remove from your diet food that is high in refined starch or with a high glycemic index. You can add some of these foods, in sensible portion sizes, back into your diet after you lose the weight you want.

Many of you may never have heard of the glycemic index. Researchers have assigned a numbered scale to show the extent a certain food will raise blood glucose (blood sugar) levels. Food with a low GI will prompt a moderate increase in blood glucose. But a food with a high GI may cause our blood glucose level to increase above the optimal level.

However, this brings forth another question. What's wrong with a high blood sugar level? The answer to that is it causes massive amounts of insulin to be secreted into your body to help get the sugar out of the blood and into the body's cells.

Frequent eating of meals high on the glycemic index can cause constantly high insulin levels. This puts you body's glandular systems on a yo-yo ride as it tries to adjust to high insulin levels and can leave you tired, hungry and on a path toward cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

The question now is not so much what you should eat as what you shouldn't eat. In general, eat meat in low amounts, this usually means the proper portions. These can be found on the purchase package. Eat red meat infrequently, moderate amounts of fish and chicken and plenty of fruits and vegetables.

Now when you go to the gym, with a proper diet for fitness, you will get optimum results from your workout.

References

Thomas Meinert Larsen, Stine-Mathilde Dalskov, Marleen van Baak, Susan A. Jebb, Angeliki Papadaki, Andreas F.H. Pfeiffer, J. Alfredo Martinez, Teodora Handjieva-Darlenska, Marie Kunešová, Mats Pihlsgård, Steen Stender, Claus Holst, Wim H.M. Saris, Arne Astrup. Diets with High or Low Protein Content and Glycemic Index for Weight-Loss Maintenance. New England Journal of Medicine, 2010; 363 (22): 2102 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1007137