If you’re thinking about “starting a diet,” you may be thinking that you want quick results, where you’ll drop 5, 10, or more pounds — quickly. However, there’s more to it than that. Instead, what you need to think about is to satisfy both your body’s needs and your own, healthfully, for the rest of your life.
So-called fad or quick fix diets are certainly nothing new, and they’ve been around for a long, long time. They do work for short-term results, such as if you want to get into a bikini for summer. However, the diet industry actually thrives on our failure, because let’s face it; if we actually succeed long-term, they no longer make money from us.
Every New Year, many of us resolve again and again that we’re going to lose weight after our holiday binges. So, suddenly, we are bombarded with diets and exercise DVDs, all of which promise that yes, we can have that svelte figure. A few weeks go by, and the diet, too, goes on the shelf; until spring comes around, at least, at which time we want to look good for the beach or to get into our evening gown for the next party.
Instead of going through that merry-go-round again and again, though, why not start a “diet” that’s going to produce not only the results you want, but a way of life that can become permanent, so that you can maintain your weight ideally and never have to look at another “diet” again? In fact, our metabolism is one of the most important factors in our diets, but many of us have the wrong idea of just what that means. Here are four major areas dieters make mistakes:
1. Trying to lose weight from just one area. It’s a known fact; you can’t just “spot reduce.” All those late-night infomercials aside, if you want to lose fat on your butt, you have to lose fat everywhere. So, a whole body workout is key, not that nifty new piece of equipment that’s (supposedly) going to make your thighs look smaller.
2. Use diet pills to lose weight. These tablets slow down the metabolism by lowering the appetite to lose weight. This is short term result with detrimental effects on your long term wellbeing.
3. Extensively cutting calories. When you cut calories extensively, you cut your metabolism down as well, which is actually going to sabotage your weight loss in the long run. You might lose a lot of weight at first, but don’t let that fool you; that weight loss is muscle mass and water, not fat. And because you lose muscle mass when you do that, your metabolism is going to be lowered even further, which means you’re going even have less ability than previously to lose weight. That’s because you won’t be able to burn calories to the extent you did before you lost all that muscle mass. And when you go back to eating more calories (as you must, since severely restricted diets never work for the long haul), you’re going to gain all of that weight back, and probably more, even if you don’t actually eat more calories.
4. Thinking of metabolism as a “one factor only” element. Metabolism isn’t just affected by one area of your lifestyle; in fact, your sleeping habits, your gender, the amount of muscle mass you have, and your age, among other characteristics, affect it.
For truly successful weight loss, you have to consider all of the above areas and put them into proper perspective. Your first consideration when you diet should be your overall personal health. Don’t go for “quick weight loss” fad diets, and instead construct a healthy eating plan that’s going to support you in health and life, for the long haul.
Tired of wasting your money in diets that doesn’t work? Here you will find articles and reviews of the best diet plans to lose weight permanently. You can also watch my videos about healthy diet plans to lose weight quickly.