You might think that going on a diet is the solution to all your weight problems, but the chances are dieting will do very little to solve anything. Indeed, the chances are you will quickly get stuck in a cycle of losing and gaining weight, as your body is forced to adjust to your ever-changing calorie intake. Although it may not be particularly healthy to be overweight, it isn't exactly healthy to starve yourself for weeks at a time or binge on huge quantities of food after having deprived yourself, either. To lose weight and keep it off requires a certain amount of balance in your life.
You therefore have to look at making sensible lifestyle changes that will put you in control of your calorie intake, without you becoming obsessed with weight loss. Fad diets have an addictive quality because when you stick to them you can lose a substantial amount of weight in a very short space of time. It keeps you motivated to be able to look in the mirror or stand on the scales and see a noticeable difference. However, you also have to bear in mind that a lot of the weight you have lost will have come from water and muscle mass.
Consequently, as soon as you revert back to your normal diet, you will pile on the pounds again. It isn't healthy to continually lose and gain weight, as you often end up heavier than you were before going on a diet. After starving yourself, your body wants to hold on to any extra calories you feed it and you generally find that losing weight becomes harder. Not only is it physically harder, as it can also be difficult mentally to motivate yourself when you know that you have lost weight in the past but failed to keep it off.
Fad diets may appeal to you because you are able to lose weight quickly, but you can't usually follow these diets for very long without compromising your immune system. If you're not getting the right balance of nutrients, you may find yourself feeling tired and ill all the time, which is hardly the best way to spend weeks or months of your life. That is why you should concentrate on improving your overall health through gradual weight loss, rather than becoming preoccupied with losing weight as rapidly as possible, when the likelihood is that you will only fail when it comes to weight maintenance, anyway.
Losing weight often gives you an emotional boost, as your confidence grows when you can see a difference and when other people start to compliment you, but if you go on a diet to achieve this weight loss there is always a danger you will struggle with weight maintenance. What follows will be feelings of embarrassment, shame, disappointment and frustration. You feel down about yourself and the temptation is there to eat in order to cheer yourself up and so you find yourself on a downward spiral.
If you're serious about losing weight so that you never have to go through the weight-loss process again, you have to approach it sensibly, rather than turning to fad diets. Fad diets may help you lose weight quickly, but in most cases you are just wasting your time because you don't come away from these diets prepared for what you need to do to keep the weight off. You usually end up heavier and more miserable afterwards, and so you may as well have not bothered.
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