The history of dieting is quite convoluted and challenging for a lot of people. But it does go to show that people have started to try and stay in shape for quite some time. And there’s a reason for that. The reality is that working out is only one thing that people from the old ages did. They also tried to adapt their diet in a meaningful way. And that’s what brought a lot of great new things to the table. Dieting in particular was quite the issue for a lot of time. It came with a multitude of challenges and it was definitely one of the more challenging things to endure.
We know that Ancient Romans and Greeks were avid sportsmen, they liked special events, so they did try to work out to stay in great shape. They also knew that it was important to eliminate some of the unhealthy food from their diet. That was especially true in the case of athletes, but it became a lot more prevalent as time passed by, which is definitely the type of thing that you had to focus on. The ancient people had an admiration for the perfect body. We can see that from the various sculptures out there, that’s for sure. But then again, this also shows us that they were very strict in regards to what they ate and the type of food they liked to have.
Onward a few centuries after Christ and we will notice that people were a lot more focused on religion and they saw that the physical body was an enemy of the soul many times. St Augustine for example struggled with various types of food issues, and they even ended up starving themselves. That was the type of issue that happened in the first decades and centuries after Christ. Christians in particular did a very good job at bringing in front a better way to serve and prepare for God, which was basically eating less and focusing more on health rather than anything else. That was one of the most important things to consider, which is what mattered the most in that regard.
A millenia after that, people ended up being quite fat. In fact, William the Conqueror was so fat that he had issues mounting his horse. People at that time drank a lot and they didn’t really have a healthy diet to begin with. It was the type of thing that a lot of people didn’t care at that time. They were more focused on having a life outside the rules. And that’s why a lot of people diet during that time, because the regulations weren’t that followed most of the time, and there wasn’t any medical science ready to help people. So they did end up dying rather quickly, at least when compared to the next centuries.
The first diet book did end up appearing in around 1558. It’s still in print, it was written by Luigi Cornaro and the idea was to share with people a variety of notions regarding health and how they could stay healthy. The thing you have to realize is that a lot of people were extremely fat at that particular time. Henry VIII in particular is known for being one of the fattest kings out there, and he was not the only one.
In fact, in 1550 John Halle actually stated that a lot of people die from gluttony instead of swords or plague. And yes, it was true. The book about dieting we mentioned earlier advised people to drink around 14 ounces of wine and to have 12 ounces of food.
Giacomo Castelvetro also had a book that actually encouraged people to eat more veggies, fruits and herbs. At that time a lot of people weren’t that much into veggies, so this was a great opportunity to show people the best way to eat properly, something that’s still very hard to achieve even nowadays.
During 1660 there was famine in Europe, and that was a very problematic thing, to the point there were a lot of people which starved to death. People had to focus on eating foods like potatoes for example. But as you can imagine, potatoes had lots of carbs, and that brought in lots of situations where people struggled with their weight. It wasn’t that good for them, if anything it was very problematic.
It was during the 18th century when people started to focus more on real dieting as we see it right now. Until that time, women’s curves were not that sought after. But starting with the 19th century, women started to take better care of their body. From here to making sure that they were supple and they looked good it was just a single step. It was by far one of the most important things for them, since they had a lot of issues staying slim with the regular diets.
So it wasn’t until that time when women started to focus a lot more on eating the right way. They focused on veggies and they removed foods that had lots of carbs from their diet. It was during the 19th century where we had the first celebrity diet in the form of Lord Byron as well as the First Low Carb Diet written by Billat Savarin and so on. There was definitely a time for people to start acting when it came to maintaining a good health.
It’s easy to see that it was quite challenging for people to find a way to stay healthy and fit without using any performance enhancing dugs (which will helps you to be fit, but be worry about the side effects, you can check this site for more).
But throughout the ages they did try and find a variety of new ways to eliminate the unwanted fat. It took a while until we got to understand what it means to stay healthy and what is really a fit person and what is overweight. But then again that’s the thing what matters the most here, and thankfully we now have a lot more control over our weight!
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