Mahmood Siddique, M.D

By: centraljersey.com
Calorie Restriction (CR) is not a typical diet. It is a way for a person to truly become healthier and extend his or her quality of life. Although many diets focus on having a person lose weight, CR focuses on ensuring healthy and sustainable eating habits that help a person to feel energized, look and feel younger, and become healthier.
The idea behind CR is not simply calorie reduction, but on focusing on making your calories count. Every day, hundreds of millions of people consume worthless calories (calories with little nutritional benefit) which do not satisfy their hunger. Chips, candy, white flour products based on worthless calories cause people to eat more, gain weight, and still feel hungry.
CR is characterized by consuming roughly 25 percent fewer calories than would be normally consumed.
Here are some recommended guidelines for CR:
– Avoid flour and simple sugars, which have high calories but little nutritional value.
– Eat vegetables. Leafy and other vegetables have the highest nutrient level per volume of calories, making them essential for anyone practicing CR.
– Make sure to eat enough, but not too much, protein. Most recommendations dictate that protein consumption should be slightly greater than 0.8 grams per kilogram weight per day.
– Carefully select protein and fat sources. Most fats have a high caloric content. Contrary to popular opinion, use palm oil and coconut oil because they are the most nutrient-rich of all the fats, containing medium chain fatty acids (MCFAs).
Mahmood Siddique, M.D., is board-certified in Sleep Medicine, Pulmonary, Critical Care and Internal Medicine. He is a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and is a member of the medical staff at University Medical Center at Princeton. He can be reached at 609-587-9944. On the Web: www.sleep-wellness.org