Thinking about starting a diet this year? Improving your health through weight loss may be paramount when it comes to your health, but here are five reasons why dieting may not be the right answer.
- The average person who diets (108 million people on average) make 4-5 attempts per year.
- The overwhelming majority of those who lose weight through dieting gain the weight back plus more.
- Six years later, fourteen of the contestants studied from the Biggest Loser were found to have vastly lower metabolic rates than expected for their age, size, and muscle mass. The longer they maintained their weight loss, unfortunately, the more pronounced the effect became.
- Dieting teaches you to override your internal cues. Dieting with set foods and amounts teaches you to ignore natural signals of hunger and satiety.
- Dieting creates preoccupation with food. When on a diet, all you can think about is what you want when you aren’t on a diet.
The thing is, your body is not the same as any other body walking the face of this earth. It carries its’ unique experiences of movement, lifestyle, foods, stresses, etc. Therefore, your body will not respond to a program the same as anyone else’s body will. You are not a cookie cutter body so no more cookie cutter programs! This year, resolve never to diet again.
Instead, try out these strategies:
- Include protein and produce at every meal (the one component that almost all diets have in common).
- Drink half your body weight in fluid ounces of water each day.
- Start reading the ingredient lists of foods, don’t purchase it if the ingredients don’t sound like something your grandmother would recognize.
- Only eat when you are hungry.
- Stop eating when you are 80% full or when you are no longer hungry.
These are habits you can develop and maintain over a lifetime that yields great results. Albeit, the results may be slower, but they will sustainable. Allowing you to shed those unwanted pounds for good!
About the Author
Kelli Shallal MPH, RD, nutrition coaching and communications specialist. Kelli works with nutrition clients one on one and is the author of her healthy living blog www.hungryhobby.net.