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Fitness Articles |
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Deliberate
restriction of food intake in order to lose weight or to prevent weight
gain, known as dieting, is the path that millions of people all over the
world are taking in order to reach a desired body weight or appearance.
Preoccupation with body shape, size, and weight creates an unhealthy
lifestyle of emotional and physical deprivation. Diets take control away
from us. Many
of us who diet get caught in a "yo-yo" cycle that begins with
low self-acceptance and results in structured eating and living because we
lack trust in our body and are unwilling to listen and adhere to our
body's signals of hunger and fullness. On diets, we distrust and ignore
internal signs of appetite, hunger, and our need to be physically and
psychologically satisfied. Instead, we depend on diet plans, measured
portions, and a prescribed frequency for eating. As
a result, many of us have lost the ability to eat in response to our
physical needs; we experience feelings of deprivation, then binge, and
finally terminate our "health" program. This in turn leads to
guilt, defeat, weight gain, low self-esteem, and then we're back to the
beginning of the yo-yo diet cycle. Rather than making us feel better about
ourselves, diets set us up for failure and erode our self-esteem. Adhering
to diet plans leads to perfectionist tendencies that in turn can result in
a loss of control. People with the diet mentality have a perception of
foods as either "good" (diet foods) or "bad" (binge
foods); they see foods as coming in "good" amounts
(small/low-calorie) or "large" amounts (diet-breaking). When we
dieters eat "bad" foods or "large" amounts, we tend to
believe we have "blown" our diet for the day or the weekend so
we might as well binge further and start over the next day. The
Dos and Don'ts of Dieting Don't Do It Following
the list of foods that a diet allows or forbids us is really only feasible
in the short term. If we don't change our tastes and preferences so we
learn to enjoy foods lower in fat and higher in nutritional value, we will
feel more and more restricted. And eventually we will resume our former
eating habits because we still have a preference for high-fat foods. When
you diet, a piece of pizza is sinful; eating cake and ice cream makes you
a bad person. A missed workout means skipping dinner and doing hundreds of
crunches. A planned dinner engagement requires skipping breakfast and
having just a piece of fruit for lunch. You refuse a dinner party for fear
of being tempted with food you haven't "earned" or calories you
haven't "saved." The
attitudes and practices acquired through years of dieting are likely to
result in a body weight and size obsession, low self-esteem, poor
nutrition and excessive or inadequate exercise. Weight loss from following
a rigid diet is usually temporary. Most diets are too drastic to maintain;
they are unrealistic and unpleasant; they are physically and emotionally
stressful. And most of us just resume our old eating and activity
patterns. Diets control us; we are not in control. People who try to live
by diet lists and rules learn little or nothing about proper nutrition and
how to enjoy their meals, physical activity, and a healthy lifestyle. No
one can realistically live in the diet mode for the rest of their life,
depriving themselves of the true pleasures of healthy eating and activity. We
Don't Fail Diets; They Fail Us! Decades
of research have shown that diets, both self-initiated and
professionally-led, are ineffective at producing long-term health and
weight loss (or weight control). When your diet fails to keep the weight
off, you may say to yourself, "If only I didn't love food so much . .
. If I could just exercise more often . . . If I just had more will
power." The problem is not personal weakness or lack of will power.
Only 5 percent of people who go on diets are successful. Please understand
that we are not failing diets; diets are failing us. Last
Year, More Than 34 Million Americans Tried Diets! Diets
have made us more aware of calories. However, controlling your body weight
through calorie-counting is almost impossible. The National Institutes of
Health recently completed a 20-year study of traditional low-calorie diets
to see if they really helped people lose weight and keep it off. The diet
plans studied included Weight Watchers®, Jenny Craig®, The Diet Center®
and most other traditional diet programs and diet fads. The study
concluded that traditional low-calorie diet plans have a 95 percent
failure rate; i.e., 95 percent of the people on the plans gained back all
of the weight they had lost within a few years. Most
people gained back the weight during the next year! In fact, most people
gain an additional five pounds after each dieting cycle. The
reason 95 percent of all traditional diets fail is simple. When you go on
a low-calorie diet, your body thinks you are starving; it actually becomes
more efficient at storing fat by slowing down your metabolism. When you
stop this unrealistic eating plan, your metabolism is still slow and
inefficient that you gain the weight back even faster, even though you may
still be eating less than you were before you went on the diet. In
addition, low-calorie diets cause you to lose both muscle and fat in equal
amounts. However, when you eventually gain back the weight, it is all fat
and not muscle, causing your metabolism to slow down even more. Now you
have extra weight, a less healthy body composition, and a less attractive
physique. |
