WHY CONVENTIONAL DIETS NEVER WORK.

You've probably heard of this before  - someone goes on a diet, loses a bit of weight, but then two weeks after they have ended the  diet they are actually heavier than they were  before! Not good. Why is this? Well, conventional diets are for the short term. They do not take into account how your body actually works or how it responds to a lack of food.

A diet is simply a method of starving your body of the food it requires until you are at your ideal weight. With a diet, you are instructed to eat a restricted amount of calories until you are at your target weight.
          When you have achieved this, you are  'allowed' to start eating 'normally' again. Then what happens? Two weeks later, voila, you've put the weight back on and are back to square one. Once again you are looking for the next 'fad' which will promise to help you 'lose weight quickly, safely and naturally'. What you must ask yourself when presented with any of these 'fad' diets is if you can eat like that forever? Could you live the rest of your life without eating bread? Or drinking milk? Or cutting out something else you're advised not to eat? Doubtful. I think it would be a conservative estimate that the diet industry is worth hundreds of millions of pounds annually for businesses, and is still growing. On the same token, there are also crystal clear facts that obesity is on the rise. Hmm, I would have thought that with the exploding diet industry promising to help you lose weight and get in shape, obesity levels would at least drop slightly? Apparently not!

  DIETS DON'T WORK, CASE CLOSED.

The good news is that there is a way to lose weight (if that's your goal) and keep it off - by making sustainable changes to your eating habits. One problem though… For most people, change is scary, change is different, and change is out of our comfort zone. Thankfully, the people who have made the necessary changes and have experienced long term health benefits look back and think "why the hell did I not do this before!  The scary bit is just the thought of changing your habits and changing what you eat on a regular basis. Once you start implementing the changes, and start seeing results, these results become reassuring. This, in turn, motivates you to keep going and to keep it up. Once these new eating habits have been formed (this takes roughly 27 days), this is how you are now. This is the new you.  DIETS ARE BAD. Making the correct changes to your everyday eating habits is good. 

WHAT DOES WORK?

A simple formula is all that is needed to explain weight loss: CALORIES BURNED > CALORIES CONSUMED = WEIGHT LOSS .So if you burn more calories (through exercise) than you consume each day (through the food you eat), your body will begin to use its fat reserves for energy. This is what we want! 

BUT! Please don’t stop eating completely, and start exercising around the clock because your body won’t react nicely to that either. A hypoglycemia {low blood sugar} crash isn’t nice. This is basically when your blood glucose levels are so low that   it feels like your body is shutting down! Definitely not good! We can calculate something called a BMR, which is your Basal Metabolic Rate {the rate at which the body uses energy while at rest to maintain vital functions such as breathing and keeping warm.}.This is a calculation to suggest how many calories you need per day to maintain your current weight. We shouldn’t be eating anything fewer than this calculation.

For healthy weight loss, and to stop our bodies putting the weight back on again in a few weeks (as with your dieting) you should eat the correct amount of calories as per your BMR calculation and perform effective fat burning exercises. So, it is relatively simple to lose weight, but why do people seem to struggle? Well, we’ve found there are several reasons:

• They don’t know what foods  they should / shouldn’t eat.
•  Their motivation  disappears  when  they  don’t see results as quickly  as expected.
• They don’t know what exercises to do to speed up fat loss .
• Emotional eating, food cravings…
•  The list could go easily go on for 5 or more bullet points.

So how can you overcome  all the common  obstacles and  guarantee  success?

1.  Get an exercise programme  that is tailored for fat loss –  follow this  seriously. Results will not show overnight, so do yourself a favour and DON’T  STEP ON THE SCALES  every morning and expect there to be an  immediate decline.  Throw your scales away if you need to. If you must keep track of your progress –  only step on the scales once  every three weeks, and keep a diary of your progress.

2.  Stop eating all the junk. You know what you should and shouldn’t be eating. So get rid of everything that is refined, has added sugar, or added fat. No more chips, crisps, chocolates, pizzas, ice cream,  etc.  When you slowly phase out all the rubbish food, you stop  craving it (it’s all  to  do with  your  blood  sugar levels ). But you don’t have to starve yourself. If you eat plenty of complex  carbohydrates, you definitely won’t go hungry. Complex  carbohydrates release energy slowly throughout the day, so you  keep hunger at bay for longer.

Complex carbohydrates are ?

Brown rice , Potatoes, Wholemeal breads, Brown bread, Pitta bread, Bagels, Wholegrain cereals, High fibre  breakfast cereals, Porridge oats, All bran, Weetabix, Shredded wheat, Ryvita crisp bread,  Muesli, Oatcakes, Beans.

3.  Stay consistent. Again, results won’t show overnight. Rome wasn’t built in a day and getting your ideal body may take a little longer than expected.  BUT YOU WILL GET THERE. Persevere. With the correct diet and exercise programme you can lose up to half a stone (7lbs) a month, safely, AND keep it off. So it may only take a few months to get the body you want.

This article is put together by different SHB and different authors including different websites just for the benefits of mankind.

For more information visit

http://www.squiresfitness.com

http://www.soundhealthandfoods.blogspot.com/