Naked Nutrition

A Vegan Diet means abstaining from any animal products. This include eggs, milks, cheeses, honey, and other products that come directly from animals.   What is a Vegan Diet?   Each year, on November 1, the people around the globe celebrate World Vegan Day. And, although it's not always the most widely publicized event, it's still any important one that’s been going strong since 1994.     But what does it mean to follow a vegan diet? Is there more to veganism than just avoid animal-based fo...

If you’re busy and constantly on the go (who isn’t?), you probably struggle to keep up with following a healthy, balanced diet from time to time.   Some days, it’s just quicker and easier to grab something at the gas station on the way to work, or hit the drive-thru on the way home. When this situation happens more often than not, chances are that you notice it starting to catch up with you on the scale, or in your lack of energy.   What can you do? Enter meal replacement shakes.   Sure, you’...

Fasting has a pretty interesting reputation in the health and fitness world.   A huge body of evidence suggests that fasting – limiting your caloric intake for a prolonged period can have numerous benefits including weight loss, improved immune function, improved cognitive function, and even an increased life-space.   And yet, many people don't fast.   Why? Put simply: it feels wrong. Years of fitness mythology and general, but wrong, advice has led to a misconception that if you don't eat fo...

Regardless of exactly why you chose to exclude meat and other animal products from your diet, being a vegetarian can come with quite a few challenges.   For most people, the chief concern has to do with protein intake. Since animal-based foods are generally seen as the primary source of protein, people often don't understand how to meet these needs as a vegetarian.   In truth, there are many plant-based foods that are full of protein and – by following a well-designed diet – meeting your prot...

Whey protein powder – by far one of the most popular supplements out there – tends to be associated with a particular class of exerciser. Specifically, people generally think of big, muscle-bound, bodybuilder-types chugging whey protein shakes several times a day in an effort to bulk up.   Unfortunately, this limited view has meant that plenty of people have missed out on a powerful and underpublicized benefit of whey: weight loss.   How does whey protein powder aid in weight loss? And how ca...

When following a new diet, it can be challenging to know what foods do and do not fall within the confines of that eating pattern. This can be especially difficult in the case of a highly restrictive diet like the raw food diet. As the name suggests, the raw food diet requires you to eat only raw food.   Although, technically, most advocates say that the food simply cannot be heated to more than 115 degrees Fahrenheit. The theory behind this approach is that cooking food at high heat – or any...

Logically, it seems like ALL protein powders should be gluten free. After all, they’re just made from powdered whey or casein or pea or rice, right?   How is it possible for an oft-vilified wheat protein find its way in there? Unfortunately, gluten has found a way to sneak into many of the top-selling protein powders on the market.   For people with gluten allergies or insensitivities (or people who want to eat more cleanly) it’s important to understand why and where gluten might be lurking i...

Whey protein has a ton of health benefits, even though most people immediately associate it with the health and fitness realm.   And, within that application, there's a good reason for its popularity: whey protein has been shown to encourage an overall healthy body composition – meaning it helps to builds lean muscle and reduce fat.   The popular powder, though, has plenty of other uses. For one thing, whey can be extremely useful to diabetics.   How? Is there a particular type of whey protei...

What is intermittent fasting?   Intermittent fasting has become a popular practice among the health and fitness industries. It is a practice of cycling between phases of fasting and eating.    This diet practice emphasizes when you can eat, rather than what you can eat – contrary to many other diet fads.    The goal of intermittent fasting is not simply to just restrict calories, but rather, to enable the body to focus its energy towards maintenance and recovery instead of towards digestion....

The Keto (or Ketogenic) Diet is an extremely low-carbohydrate diet designed to increase fat loss and improve your body composition.   It involves drastically reducing carbohydrate consumption, and replacing it with fat. The reduction in carbs puts your body into a metabolic state called ketosis.   What is the Keto Diet?   Low-carb diets, in one form or another, have been around for several decades now. But, recently, several programs have appeared that all fall under the specific category of ...