The prospect of leaving a lifetime of dieting behind you can be a daunting one, because by dieting you at least know that you can get rid of your excess weight quickly. If you've always alternated between periods of dieting and periods of eating 'normally', it can be difficult to see any other way to control your weight. However, if your weight is continually fluctuating, depending on whether you're following a low-calorie diet plan or not, you're not really in control of your weight, anyway; are you? You therefore need to acknowledge that dieting is not a long-term solution to your weight problem, so that you can find another way.
The trouble is that the alternative option for weight loss – adopting lifestyle changes you can follow forever – does not yield quite as rapid results. If you simply reduce portion sizes, eat fewer snacks, make healthier choices at meal times and exercise a few times a week, you probably aren't going to lose the three to four pounds you could lose when subsisting on a diet of cabbage soup. Indeed, with very-low calorie diets you can find yourself losing even larger amounts of weight in the beginning, which keeps you motivated to continue. It doesn't take long for your body to adjust, though, and so soon you're hardly losing anything, which makes eating such a restrictive, boring diet seem like a waste of time.
Indeed, it is a waste of time if you're only going to pile the weight back on soon after disposing of your latest diet plan. If you go back to eating your usual calorific fare, your body will be desperate to make the most of your sudden intake of calories, thus holding on to them. You may end up gaining more weight than you lost and find that it isn't so easy to lose weight the next time you go on a diet. If you're having difficulty getting your head around the idea you need to make small, sensible changes to your lifestyle to achieve weight loss, it is worth considering all the downsides of dieting, including the fact it is so hard to keep the weight off once you have reached your goal.
Dieting doesn't prepare you for how to manage your weight so that you don't pile on the pounds once again, as diets are there to facilitate rapid weight loss. Finding the motivation to stick to a limited, boring diet isn't so difficult when you can see the difference this has every time you step on the scales. However, once you no longer need to lose weight, there is less incentive to control your eating habits, as you don't get any excitement from seeing the numbers stay the same. Plus, you cannot usually live on the kind of diet that helps you achieve weight loss fast. If you tried to live on cabbage soup for longer than a few weeks, you would end up malnourished, lethargic and susceptible to illness.
Thus, although embracing a healthier lifestyle might not help you to lose weight as quickly as you would like, at least you have a significantly better chance of keeping the weight off. By changing your eating and exercise habits to lose weight, you won't have to do anything drastically different to maintain your weight. There is nothing worse than losing a huge amount of weight, being praised for it and then gaining it all back again, as you feel self-conscious and embarrassed, even though you are certainly not alone in getting caught up in cycle of dieting and weight gain. You do have an opportunity to change, though, so that you never have to go on a diet ever again!
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