Thin Blog

Posts Tagged ‘fad diets’

Today I went to Mobile, Alabama and had a pretty good day. I spent alot of time walking around and there were restaurants pretty much everywhere and I must admit that I gave into eating foods that I do not eat much anymore. I kind of threw the “diet” out the window and I have no regrets because I am not on a diet and I am still losing weight.

The reason I have no regrets about eating the foods I did today was because I know in the scheme of true weight loss there is no problem with straying from your eating habits. If I were on the Atkins diet I would now have to spend a couple of days recovering and this is the trademark of a fad diet. When a person is attempting to lose 20 pounds the goal is to not just lose the weight, but to lose it for the rest of your forever. The same holds true if you want to lose 100 pounds. Fad diets do not work, life style changes do!

When you are on a fad diet your food selection limits your ability to lose weight not only in quantity and quality but also in selection. The moral of my day is that tomorrow I will be back on my bike after work and go for a nice ride with my spouse. It is great to have a support person in my life and highly recommend you find one for yourself. I will continue to drink plenty of water and I will go back to ensuring I do not waste my calories on liquids of any kind. Tomorrow I will more than likely have a lunch at Subway again return to my healthy selections.

When you are on a true “diet” it is not a diet at all. It is a journey and it will last for a lifetime. That journey today allowed me to eat some really good southern food and not feel guilty because I know the world has not ended. I know that a diet is not nearly as good as a “live-it” and my journey towards true weight loss and health was only fortified by being able to deviate like I did today. On true weight loss the “diet” does not end because of one day of enjoyment and over-indulging.

There is so much misinformation that is circulating around the internet about weight loss that it is hard to decide what is good and works and what is bad and does not work.  You sit in your chair and not only feel bloated you are getting depressed about your weight gain and the feeling of being powerless to be able to take control of your life.  There is a really good chance that the reason for your budding depression is because you have been led around with incorrect and inaccurate information.  Let’s look at some weight loss facts and let you be the judge!

1)  Diets Work In The Long-Term

All diets fail as you can attest to because here you sit today and your weight is still there.  You have tried so many fad diets and yet you still think that maybe that one diet will come along that works.  Give up on the diet and start on your new lifestyle because any diet is doomed to fail.  Diets have a start date and an end date.  What happens if you stop eating carbs and lose 100 pounds?  If 100 pounds was your goal and your diet was a “success” what now?  Do you go back to carbs or are you ready to give them up forever?  More than likely your diet will end long before your weight loss is forever.  Quit looking for a diet and start a “live-it.”  Start a program that you can lose a pound here and there and stick with it for the long haul.  This is how a weight loss plan lasts for a lifetime.  True weight loss is not a dash to the finish line.  True weight loss is for the rest of your life!

2)  Not Eating Will Help Me Lose Weight

The uninformed weight loss attempt will include eating fewer calories during the day.  If you want to lose weight you need to be able to give your food the energy it needs to survive.  If you just cut back on the food supply it is not healthy and actually defeats the purpose.  When a person cuts back on calories their body goes into a sort of starvation mode and starts to restrict the burning of fat and starts to increase the burning of muscle.  This hurts your weight loss attempt and actually when you start eating normal again you will add more fat than when you started to try and lose weight.  You MUST eat to lose weight, which leads us to the next myth.

3) Three Meals a Day Is Best

If you want to lose weight you should not eat three meals a day.  If you want to lose weight you should supply only enough calories every four hours to get you to the next mini-meal.  If you eat 2,500 calories at one meal your body takes what it needs to operate and then converts the rest to fat.  If you eat less more often then there will no excess calories to turn into fat and since you are not hungry your body will burn fat and not muscle.  If you want to lose weight then you need to eat to lose weight.

4) I Can Do Without My Favorite Foods

If you love pizza are you planning to never eat it again?  What about chocolate?  What about Pepsi?  Every time people start diets they start off with rigid rules and make absurd rules like no pizza ever again.  What this results in is the event of having a slice and then feeling as if you are a failure and that you can’t make your diet work and then you just give up and stop trying.  If you really want to lose weight it is not a dash to the goal, it is a marathon.  If you are trying to lose weight then you need to go back to myth #1 and work that slice of pizza into your life.  You are foolish if you think that you can go through life without ever eating your favorite foods again.  If you ate a couple of slices of pizza tonight that is not the end of the world.  True weight loss is all about choices and choosing a reward ever now and then is not failure.  If you are losing weight and eat pizza one night and get back on track the next day the weight loss world will not crumble.  You can’t deprive yourself from food and be a success for the long-term because in the long-term you will surrender to your desires and then you will feel like a failure and give up.  By incorporating your favorite foods every now and then you are setting yourself up for long-term success and also staying away from fad diets.  It all goes back to your diet not being a diet, but a live-it.

5) Everyone Can Lose Weight But Me

The chance of you having a medical condition exist and should never be over looked but chances are that if you really tried to lose weight you could make it happen with the proper motivation.  For some people that motivation may be heart failure or the death of a sibling or a spouse.  Whatever your reason for reading this here and now it proves you have some motivation.  You too can lose weight but only if you educate and apply yourself.  If you really want to lose weight then you too can make it happen.  Join a support group and just start getting more active.  If you really want it bad enough then just go for it and make it happen.  You can lose weight but you have to want it bad enough for that motivation to last.  You need sustained motivation.

Are these really the top five weight loss myths?  Maybe not but they really are worth your time to realize that what you just read can empower you to move on to the next level of your weight loss journey.  That next level is the beginning of your weight loss journey.  That journey began with the knowledge that tears away only five weight loss myths.  Keep learning about health, fitness and weight loss and your journey will be a lifetime of health.  Yes, you too can do it, now just get up and go for it.  Every journey begins with the first step and you have gained some knowledge and that is your first step.

Having to lose weight has to be more of an ongoing event than something that you just do to get done.  Losing weight the correct way does not pay attention to dates or to events.  If you want to lose weight then you need to want to get it done for the correct reasons.  Trying to lose weight for a reunion next month is more of a joke than a sincere weight loss attempt.  If you need to lose 20 pounds fast then chances are you have either been on a series of fad diets in your life and that at the end of each and every year you are slowly getting larger and larger.  The “joke” is the reality that if you think you can drop a few pounds all of your weight loss issues will be over.  This belief is further from the truth than you realize and it is also dangerous to your very health and well being.  If you start taking diet pills or some fad diet the end result will NOT be weight loss.  The date that travels beyond the diet pills or fad diet will find you only heavier than you are now.  At the ultimate end of all the fad weight loss ideas is the sad reality that your body only puts on more pounds than you when you started the diet.  This is not opinion, it is fact and it is happening to you now and has been going on for years.  There you sit with a belly that is nothing you ever planned on having.  Right here and right now you need to stop looking for a quick weight loss fix and just decide that you are going to be better at losing weight.  You are not going to just stop eating carbohydrates or only eat raw food in a legitimate weight loss attempt.  You need to change more than your diet, you need to change the entire way you look at yourself.

When you see yourself in the mirror you need to respect what you see.  You need to make the choice that from here on out it will be different and you are going to make better choices.  But what are those choices?  Sure we could rattle off some great meal plans and there are another million websites out here that provide more recipes than you could ever eat.  The point is that you need to change all of the approaches to your health.  You need to start educating yourself on what is good to eat and what is bad to eat and in what quantities does all this happen.  You need to gain the knowledge that will foster your ability to be able to make better food choices.  You also need to get up and get moving and do some form of exercise.  No matter how often you watch weight loss television shows you need to increase your activity.  You need to just get started and you better do it soon before it is too late.     

Spend a few days searching the world for knowledge and decide what diet or food plan is best for your life.  You must decide based on how you will spend the rest of your life because the ultimate success in a weight loss program is to never gain the weight back again.  When you stop the fad diet and resume your normal life is where fad diets become a failure.  Fad diets achieve results but sooner or later those results vanish.  Education, knowledge, effort and exercise are the foundation for success in weight loss.  The success of a diet is never actually achieved because it is so easy to slip back into obesity.  Stay away from fad diets because true weight loss never really ends, but fad diets always end.