If you want to lose weight for good, avoid skipping meals. Skipping meals may lead to binging later on.
Most important is not how fat you are, but what your fat/lean body mass ratio is. It is body composition that counts, not just fat.
Because fad diets often recommend large amounts of a specific food (i.e. all protein or all apples), they deprive your body of essential nutrients and lack variety and balance.
Beware of diets that promote this kind of unbalanced weight loss, Almost any food can be used to excess. Those people who tend toward excessive or compulsive eating patterns often seek out one miracle food to magically burn the fat off of their body. Unfortunately, they are always disappointed. Some of the healthiest, most nutritious foods can become problematic if used in excess, or if eaten as part of a nutritionally deficient program. Here are a few areas to be aware of:
1. Do not begin a weight-loss program before you’re emotionally ready,It is important that you are highly motivated to begin and maintain your weight management program.
2. Beware of rigid menus and nutritionally unbalanced weight-loss diets. Few people follow diets that require strict adherence to rigid menus for any reasonable length of time. Even if they start off with the best intentions, boredom and frustration usually win out in the end. This can lead to eating an unbalanced diet in a misguided quest to cut back on calories and/or fat. Some people cut out entire food groups, such as grains or carbohydrates.
3. Beware of magic herbal formulas diets that claim that certain foods or herbal pills will magically make fat disappear without any special calorie-control programs are not worth following, Avoid at all costs.
4. Beware of the diets that promise that you will lose large amounts of weight overnight should arouse your natural suspicion. Keep this in mind: at the beginning of virtually any diet that restricts calories and carbohydrates, the weight you lose is water, That’s right Water!,and studies show that the faster you lose weight, the more likely you are to regain it. Most gimmicky fad diets work in the short run because they are low in calories, not because of anything special about the diet.
5. Don’t trust a program that sounds too good to be true, you are not going to lose fourteen pounds in ten days and do so in a way that does not put stress on your body. Fat does not melt away while you sleep, you lose weight by exercising, reducing caloric intake, and increasing your metabolism in a balanced and healthy way.
6. Beware of keeping your shelves empty. Keep healthy snacking foods around the house. Because they’re afraid of overeating, many people who are trying to lose weight keep little or no food in their cupboards.
7. Beware of extreme protein diets. According to a report in the Tufts University Diet & Nutrition Newsletter (March 1985), excessively high protein intake can cause the body to lose calcium through the urine. In the long run, especially in the elderly, this calcium loss can place some individuals at greater risk for the brittle bones and unexpected fractures associated with osteoporosis. Beware of diets that use excessively high or low amounts of protein. Ingesting overly high levels of protein will increase your risk of many serious illnesses, including cancer and heart disease. Other side effects can include constipation, cramps, bad breath, and hair loss. When your diet is too low in protein, your body may damage itself by utilizing the protein from your own organs and muscles.
8. Beware of diets that recommend less than one thousand calories per day. When you cut your caloric intake suddenly, your body may reduce the number of calories it burns. Thus you may follow a low-calorie diet and still not lose weight.
9. Beware of fasting alone, it may not be the most effective approach to weight control. This is because people who lose weight through fasting not only lose body fat, but also lean muscle tissue. The loss of lean muscle mass can result in a reduction in a person’s basal-metabolic rate that makes it more difficult for them to continue to lose weight and maintain the weight loss they have already achieved. In addition to this problem, when a fasting dieter puts the weight back on, it is primarily as fat, another problem with fasting as a weight loss strategy is that extremely low-fat diets can actually increase blood levels of certain types of “undesirable cholesterol.”.
10. Beware of going from one diet to another within a short period of time. Avoid making too many changes at once. Some people will start on a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet. Then they switch to a diet that cuts back drastically on fat and calories and increases fruits and vegetables. Then they switch to an intense daily exercise and juice program. All this switching can set you up for failure.
