The Pitfalls of Weight Loss Programs and Diets
- By:Antonio LeMaire
Dieting Pitfalls:
Weight Loss Programs To Beware Of
Most diet and weight loss programs have a depressingly high failure rate, with people either never reaching their weight goals or reaching them and regaining all the weight they lost (and sometimes more) in about one year.
Getting the weight off fast is so desirable that many of us are willing to sacrifice health and ignore common sense in the hope that some new weight loss program or scheme will work. This pipe dream can unfortunately outweigh the negative consequences. So let's examine the downside of dieting.
What Is An Unhealthy Weight Loss Program?
Any weight loss program that is not nutritionally sound;
One that works against what the body naturally needs like vitamins, minerals, and a minimum number of calories a day;
One that requires you to go without eating (for example, fasting or meal replacement drinks);
One that puts your body into an unnatural state, such as starvation or ketosis.
Your body can only lose a few pounds a week on a consistent basis. If you lose more than that initially, it's likely just water loss. So any weight loss program that promises you will lose five pounds a week, or 25 pounds in 3 weeks, is guaranteeing you will be losing water and muscle mass not fat.
Almost every popular weight loss program out there falls into one of the following diet categories: low calorie diets, meal replacement drinks, packaged foods, unbalanced nutrients, and ketosis diets. Let's see how they stack up.
LOW CALORIE DIETS
Whenever you drastically reduce your calories, the body enters an unnatural state and its defenses kick in. So when calories drop below, say, 1000 calories a day, your metabolism will shut down in an effort to conserve energy. And weight loss with a sluggish metabolism is very difficult.
Your body will start using muscle tissue to provide energy, which again leads to a decrease in the metabolism. Taken to an extreme, the body will break down its vital parts (such as the heart muscle) trying to meet its energy needs.
In addition to these drawbacks, trying to maintain the weight loss over time is nearly impossible because your body is now used to making do with very few calories. Going back to "normal" eating causes the weight to pile back on.
For this reason, low cal weight loss programs rarely work over the long haul.
MEAL REPLACEMENT DRINKS
One of the most unnatural things for your body is to go without solid food, which is what meal replacement plans ask it to do. Some people think that dieting will be easier if they aren't confronted with daily food choices and the pounds will just fall off. This may be true while they are on the liquid diet. But what about afterwards?
Where will the good eating habits come from after you've lost the weight? This is something that takes time, practice and knowledge. Dieters need to establish a healthy attitude towards a life-long eating plan. And no "fad" weight loss program or liquid lunch can help you with that.
Getting hooked on meal replacements can become a destructive way to view food. It often leads dieters to fear food or binge to "feed" their cravings after a long period of deprivation. And that's just the psychological side of the equation.
The lack of fiber in such weight loss programs can be a threat to good physical health. And when the body is denied enough solid food, the intestines go into overdrive absorbing calories and nutrients. This helps you during the diet period, but later it makes it much easier to regain the weight.
Another yo-yo weight loss program that hurts you in the end.
UNBALANCED NUTRIENT PLAN
Be cautious about any weight loss program that has strict rules about good foods and bad foods. Sure, high fat and high sugar foods might be considered bad for the waistline, but moderation not abstinence is key to success.
Why? Because eating the same foods every day (say, grapefruit or high protein meals) is going to result in two things: nutritional imbalance and boredom.
All foods are made up of the same nutrients in different amounts: fat, carbohydrates, and protein. It is the right proportion of these nutrients that will bring about weight loss - not the avoidance of "bad" foods and the consumption of only "good" or magical foods.
In the world of dieting, no one food or nutrient group is magical. Variety and moderation are the keys to a healthy diet and a successful weight loss program.
PACKAGED FOODS
To stay at your ideal body weight, you have to learn how to make proper food choices. By following a packaged food weight loss program you are postponing the inevitable, and spending plenty of $$$ in the process.