When it comes to dieting, it’s important to recognize that there is no food that contains special properties that will eliminate fat for you. Restrictive diets are typically not successful because when we are denied certain food groups, our bodies can rebel. My experience with Atkins was unsuccessful despite the fact that I know others who succeeded admirably using this diet.
Restrictive diets do not teach healthy eating. They do not teach healthy maintenance. They also, rarely, take into account the differing metabolisms of individuals. When it comes to dieting or making changes in your daily diet – you should never rely on supplements to replace nutritional value on a long-term basis.
When it comes to judging a diet plan, use the following to guide your choices. You want to make sure you are not getting bad nutritional advice. Ultimately, diets that make broad promises rarely deliver and if they do, maintaining the weight loss is next to impossible once off the diet even if you do not experience health issues.
Proof by testimony is offered by many diet plans. They use tales of individuals to validate their diet secrets. You see these typically with products that promise swift weight loss or the miracle pills that state they melt the pounds right off. Unfortunately, many testifiers are company employees related to the dietary product.
Diets that require you to exclude a single food product or food group are nutritionally unsound because the human body requires protein, fat and carbohydrates in order to provide materials for cellular and tissue support to the body. It’s an overabundance of these or a misuse of these that can lead to a person being overweight. For example, eating fast food constantly provides the body with too much.
We’re still biologically programmed to conserve food and water so when we get too many carbohydrates or fats, we store them in case we end up starving in the future. A quick fix is another sign of a nutritionally unsound diet. Losing 20 lbs in 2 weeks is possible, but it is usually water-based weight and has little if no significant impact on overall weight loss.
Finally, if a diet sounds too good to be true, the scientific studies that support it were not conducted by a neutral third party and there is extreme disapproval published from reputable scientific or medical organizations – then it’s more than likely that the diet is not nutritionally sound. While there are diets that may eventually prove out and change opinions in the medical community through independent research and study (i.e. Atkins) – that can take time. Time that many fad diets do not take the time to do.