Half of all dieters quit within a month! Maybe it’s time to stop dieting and start losing?
So, why do so many dieters throw in the towel so soon? Most of those surveyed said that the program was too hard to follow and they couldn’t eat what they love.
There are oodles of reasons why popular diets rarely lead to long-term weight loss success. That’s why most dietitians, like us, recommend a non-diet approach to losing lbs.
We advocate changes to your eating and lifestyle that you can actually live with—not for just for a week or month or two—but for the rest of your life.
In the US, nearly half of us are on a diet and two-thirds of us are overweight or obese. Clearly, the diets most Americans are trying to peel off pounds don’t work. Fad diets, fasts, gimmicky products are a major part of the problem and we’re spending over 30 billion dollars a year on weight loss products and services that don’t work in the long run.
Instead of going on a strict diet that you can’t sustain, take a more balanced approach and focus on the quality of the foods you’re eating like fruits and vegetables, lean proteins and whole grains. Calories do count so find ways that are the easiest to live with that help you cut out 250-500 calories from your normal diet. Upping your exercise always helps too. It will help burn additional calories and helps to keep your metabolism higher as you drop pounds.
1. Skimp on liquid calories. Because they provide essentially no satiety value whatsoever, those calories are essentially wasted. I also eat a higher protein diet and focus on the most filling foods (ones that provide the biggest volume or serving size for the calories) to help manage my hunger.
2. Limit alcohol. Alcohol stimulates your hunger, while decreasing any willpower or inhibitions you may have to say, a pint of Haagen-Dazs or a gooey brownie. That’s a double-punch that you probably don’t want to fight.
3. Avoid exercise fat traps. I’ve learned the hard way through 20+ years of being super athletic that I can’t eat whatever just because I work out a ton. It just doesn’t add up. The calories you eat far exceed what you can burn off with exercise. You’d be shocked to realize that you need to walk or jog for several miles to burn off just a few bites of a delicious dessert.
4. Don’t skip meals, especially breakfast. In fact, over the years, breakfast has become my second largest meal, after dinner, because of point number 5.
5. Don’t eat after dinner. I’ve followed this rule for about 5 years now and have never missed nighttime snacking. I normally eat dinner around 6:30 pm and go to bed around 9:30 pm. Nighttime noshers add hundreds of generally junk calories to their diet, making it hard to lose weight.
We find that most people don’t have to completely overhaul their diet to be successful in winning at losing: often, a few small changes to your daily food choices, lifestyle, and other habits, you can wind up losing weight once and for all.
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