Diet is a restrictive word that should be thrown in the bin. A diet won’t help you to lose weight and stay in control of the number on the scales permanently. What will help you is changing the way you think about food, exercise and ultimately, yourself.
Diets are seen as a quick fix to our weight loss problems. With countless fad diets popping up over the last couple of decades and detox products targeting us on social media, it’s more important than ever to accept that there is no trick to weight loss. Eat more calories than you burn off, and you’ll put on weight. Cut down on calories and increase energy expenditure to put your body in a calorie deficit, and you will lose weight. Give your body the right instructions and it will do as it is told.
Reviewed By: Lisa Donaldson, APD, M.Nu
Yo-yo Dieting
If you’re finding yourself unable to sustain healthy habits long term, you may be a yo-yo dieter.
Yo-yo dieters follow fad diets, lose weight and achieve their goal (or get pretty close). They then revert to old eating patterns and end up gaining the weight back fairly quickly afterwards. Often they gain a little extra weight too. They might wait a few months or a year before jumping on another “quick results guaranteed” fad diet, and so begins the cycle once again.
The problem with these kinds of diets
The problem with these kinds of diets is that they are structured around extreme behaviours. They remove an element of your diet that you need or skew your diet to focus on one nutritional group. For example, they might be focused on no carbs, no fruit, all protein, or minimal dairy. The removal of certain food groups from your diet is not a long-term solution; it isn’t even a sustainable short-term solution. This type of approach to food can lead to malnutrition as you are not getting the broad spectrum of nutrients that your body needs.
All or nothing nutrition plans can also lead to a sense of deprivation that can trigger dangerous behaviours. You might feel really positive when you start cutting out all the carbs or sugar, confident that this is the solution. But more often than not, you’ll succumb to natural cravings and end up bingeing on the very food you have been avoiding.
Fad diets are all about the short cut. The quick fix rather than the slow burn. The lifestyle they present isn’t sustainable. The truth is that significant changes to lifestyle take time, understanding and planning, but they are key if you picture yourself living a healthier life now and well into the future.
A fail safe route to success
If your goal is long term weight loss (we’re talking decades, not weeks or months) then you’re in the right place. Everyone (even those with a history of cyclical dieting) can reach their goal weight with a sustained, lifestyle approach. It’s all about learning and really understanding good dietary, fitness and lifestyle choices. It’s about understanding the triggers that shape bad habits, kicking them to the curb and building better ones that you can practice for the rest of your life. You’ll see that nutrition isn’t rocket science, that 5-minute fitness can change your life and that a strong mindset will set you up for the most success.
Is there a program that can help me?
Yes, such a program exists – it’s 12WBT!
Here, there’s no such thing as diet food – just delicious, REAL food. Our programs educate and guide you to make better decisions with a long-term health focus. If we use the word diet, it’s never in reference to deprivation. We teach you how to take long term action to remain active, to finish our program knowing how to continue on your own with your new healthy lifestyle, setting new health and fitness goals and focusing on self-empowerment and a strong, confident mindset. This is a grown-up approach to health and weight loss. If you think you could use a little 12WBT in your life, visit us here to learn more about our weight loss lifestyle programs.
