It seems today that half the people you know are on a diet and the other half are thinking about going on a diet. The number of diet plans that constantly spring up testifies to this fact. Wherever there’s a growing market, there will be people who are looking to cash in on that market. But how do you know which diets are good for your health and which ones aren’t?
The problem is that even the craziest sounding of the popular diets out there actually do work. But only for a little while. No matter how radical or off-beat a diet plan sounds you will probably lose weight in the first couple of weeks. After that, not so much. For example, how can you possibly stick to a diet that completely eliminates certain food groups? You can’t and, what’s more, you shouldn’t. Eliminating groups of food from your diet means that you’re not getting a balance of foods and you’re probably missing out on essential vitamins and minerals.
Another popular fad diet approach is the fast. When you go on a fast the first thing to go is muscle. Your body is basically still adapted to living in the bad old days when food was hard to come by and people were sometimes forced to go on a fast because there just wasn’t any food around. The bodys’ natural defense for this was to conserve its energy-rich fat for the long run and start using other tissue for metabolism. Not exactly the outcome we’re going for in the 21st century, is it? What’s worse is that fasting on a long term basis weakens your immune system making you more susceptible to colds and flu viruses.
One more quick and easy way to lose weight is the diuretic based diet. Problem is the only weight you’re losing is water weight. This loss is only temporary and has nothing to do with losing fat. Sometimes you hear about boxers or wrestlers doing vigorous exercise while wearing rubber sweat suits. The goal is to lose weight fast so they can be under a certain weight before a fight. What they don’t show is, after the weigh-in the fighters always drastically increase their liquid consumption so by fight time, their weight is right back where it was.
Another popular approach to weight loss is taking pills and supplements. While the appeal of a low effort way to lose weight without diet or exercise is fairly obvious the validity of such an approach is questionable. Many supplements have known side effects or maybe even worse, haven’t been studied long enough to know exactly what dangerous side effects they may have. The fact is, eventually you will stop taking the supplements and then the weight you lost is guaranteed to come right back because you haven’t changed the eating habits that caused you to become overweight in the first place.
If you’re serious about losing weight and keeping it off there is hope but it won’t happen overnight. Go for the long term and focus on healthy eating habits and increasing your activity levels. If the new diet you’re thinking of trying out stresses these two points, you know you’re on the right track for successful weight loss.
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