Diets are great for weight loss, aren’t they?
I mean, who doesn’t want to lose a stone in a week?
Plus, there are many diets on the market so your choice is almost endless.
You hear of low-fat, low-carb, cabbage soup, Atkins, Dukan, blah-blah diet etc!
Wow, how confusing must it be to choose the right diet for you?
But the results are surely worth the effort? As long as you choose the right diet for your body type?
I’ll let you into a little secret though…
The problem with most diets is that they tend to fight against what your body needs to function most efficiently, especially when you restrict essential macronutrients like fat and carbohydrates.
For example, a low-carbohydrate diet will typically cause a loss of muscle tissue rather than body fat
and lower your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR), making it easier to put body fat on in the long-term.
One of the reasons women experience an initial quick weight loss with a low-carbohydrate diet is that they lose water weight. A significant quantity of water is held in the muscle cells of the body along with stored carbohydrate (glycogen). When you deplete your stored carbohydrate, you also lose a good bit of water weight, which isn’t good since your performance will suffer and your muscles will appear flat.
With a low-fat diet, women struggle to lose weight because they tend to replace the fat calories they would have eaten with extra carbohydrates (particularly sugary carbohydrates).
A larger quantity of refined carbohydrates trigger higher insulin levels, which will make you crave more carbohydrates as your blood sugar crashes – this becomes a difficult endless cycle of craving refined carbohydrates making weight loss very difficult.
Also, low-fat diets tend to detrimentally affect hormonal processes in the body, which can shut down your fat loss and muscle gain efforts. A sufficient quantity of healthy fats will help satisfy hunger.
I’m not even going to mention diets like the Cabbage Soup Diet – I mean, come on, could you live on that? You’ll waste away, never mind lose weight!
There is no reason to eliminate or limit your consumption of any one food group. Restrictive diets will always fail at some point.
So what should you do?
Strive for a healthy weight loss of 1-2lbs per week (3,500 calories = 1lb of weight). This will maintain your muscle tissue and ensure your body still gets the nutrients it needs to function properly.
You can combine healthy fats, protein and carbohydrates in your daily meals and snacks. I’d actually suggest having protein at every meal and then adding either healthy fats with it or healthy carbohydrates. Try to avoid healthy fats with wholegrains in the same sitting – you can still have fruit and vegetables as your carbohydrate-source instead.
Easy examples would be:
- Lean chicken breast with avocado
- Salmon with roasted vegetables
- Poached eggs with spinach and asparagus
- Lean beef mince in a tomato and garlic sauce
The thing is, you should never restrict your calories to extreme levels – you know, some women aim for 1000-1200 calories, which is probably way too low. It obviously depends on your body type but, in the main, anything approaching 1000 calories is madness.
Eat good, clean, one-ingredient foods and eat well. Enjoy your treats 10-20% of the time and don’t feel guilty about having a treat.
Don’t buy processed or packaged foods if you can help it – they contain many hidden sugars and additives.
Don’t buy low-fat products as they usually contain added sugars.
Drink plenty of water and exercise.
You’ll start to see a sustained weight loss rather than a sudden one. In the long run, you’ll be happy you chose not to diet.
Thanks
Paul
By the way, when you hire me as a Personal Trainer or attend my group classes, I give you an eating plan and recipes to help you along so you don’t have to worry too much about which foods are good and which foods aren’t so good.
If you want a FREE copy of my 5-Week Detox Meal Plan, just enter your details at the following link and you’ll get a copy sent to your Inbox. Register here –> DETOX MEAL PLAN