A Greek salad instead of a ham-filled croissant on your lunch break.
Fish instead of red meat on the grill in the evening.
If you follow a Mediterranean diet, it may well be for health reasons.
Maybe your doctor recom-mended it to lower your risk of cardiovascular (heart) or other diseases.
Don’t expect quick benefits though, says nutritional medi-cine specialist Dr Stephan Bischoff.
“Reducing your risk factors for diabetes or a heart attack won’t occur overnight – it’ll take a while,” he says.
Sometimes, the diet’s positive effects only show up after years, or even decades.
Its followers should also bear in mind that, like everything in medicine, there’s no absolute guarantee it’ll help.
“In all diseases, there’s both a lifestyle and a genetic compo-nent, so inherited risk remains,” Dr Bischoff explains, adding that following a Mediterranean diet is worthwhile nonetheless.
“People with an elevated genetic risk also benefit from it,” he says.
So converts to the Mediterranean diet can forget about getting rapid results.
“It’s not a matter of sticking to it religiously for a few weeks,” Dr Bischoff says.
“We’re talking about years.”
But once you’ve started the diet, there’s a good chance you’ll carry it through, he remarks.
“People follow it voluntarily for very long periods of time, if not the rest of their lives” – so long as they find a way to neatly incorporate it into their daily routine.
Something else to consider: The diet isn’t suitable for short-term weight loss, as it’s not focused on calorie reduction, says Dr Bischoff.
If you want to shed a few kilogrammes, you have to adjust your food intake and lifestyle so that you ingest fewer calories than your body burns.
So, exercise more, eat less. – dpa
