fad

The short answer is, yes you probably will. The long answer is, yes you probably will but you will gain it all back and probably more in the long term. You will not be the winner in the long term – the organisation who sells you the dream of that svelte, toned body belonging to that person 10 years your junior, will be the winner.

Losing weight with “the diet to end all diets” mythology has been consistently popular with people wanting to shed kilos fast. Just look at the companies that have made millions selling their plans to do this. The trouble is that people forget it has generally taken them years to gain the weight they are trying to shed. It has gone on gram by gram, but the expectation is it will come off kilo by kilo in a fraction of the time it has taken to put it on.

The promise of these commercial diets, yes the ones that elbow each other out of each other’s way to appear on your screen as soon as you do a Google search for “weight loss”, all have one thing in common. They are deprivation diets. They will guarantee you weight loss in days – as long as you give something up. But giving that “something” up is not sustainable, with the weight loss often due to water and muscle loss, not fat.

Often the advertisements will cry out with emotive and unrealistic messages to attract the overweight and the desperate – “an emergency weight loss plan”, “lose 10 pounds in 10 days”, “7 steps to lose 5 pounds in 2 days” and so on. Don’t get me wrong, these diets do work, but are only sustainable for a short time. Afterwards, once your body is recovering from being put in starvation mode, it will compensate for the loss by packing on some extra resources to get you through another “deprivation” period in the future. This is how our system is designed. These types of diets create yo-yo dieters, with an on again, off again weight problem. The only sustained loss will be in your self confidence!

Evidence shows that repeated short-term dieting results in increases in the amount of weight that will be gained in total, over time. Fad-dieting behaviours, often begun and seen in teens, can actually lead you to become overweight as an adult.

The truth behind fad dieting is that it is all to do with timing. In general you will lose weight quickly, for a short period of time, with the chance of gaining it back, and more, also in a relatively short time. The actual problem is not really the diet; it is the unrealistic goals of the dieter. The trouble is that once people lose their desired amount of weight or the “month”, “weeks” or “days” heralded by the fad diet are over, the person will usually stop the diet and go back to eating their normal fare. The food they normally ate before the diet.

It is important to note that these fad diets are all intended for deliberate weight losses – dieting for the sole purpose of losing weight. They are not designed for permanent, healthily sustainable weight management.

The key is to be mindful of what we eat. Do not deprive yourself of foods that your body needs, but focus on increasing the good things that our bodies require. Most important, is to cut out the sugars, salts and processing agents in convenience foods, and to emphasis the consumption of healthy foods along with regular exercise.

To be realistic and not regain weight over the long term, you need to lose weight over a longer period of time, gram by gram, and make positive, long term changes to how and what you eat.

Read my article on Mindful Eating for some ideas or download the Principles of Mindful Eating from The Center for Mindful Eating (TCME).

Follow these suggestions and you will see those extra kilos melt away.

 

Inspired by:

LIFE – Life Is For Experience

The Truth Behind Fad Diets