Look into the mirror and you’ll know that you are putting on weight. What the mirror cannot do is diagnose the casues for your increasing weight. In other words, if you are trying to lose weight quickly by crash dieting, you are making no effort to correct the original cause of your excess weight. That is why there are countless people who half-starve themselves both quantitatively and nutritionally to lose weight. And later gain it back, usually with additional kilos. This process of losing and gaining weight repeatedly is known as the Yo-Yo syndrome. Yo-Yo dieting makes it harder to lose weight but easier to regain it. This kind of fluctuation also aggravates physiological changes in your body which play havoc with your metabolism.
Three things make it extremely difficult to maintain a long-term loss by severe dieting or crash methods. First, you have no well-balanced dietary guidelines to help you change your eating habits.Without these it is impossible to maintain a healthy and desirable weight. Second, weight lost by crash dieting isn't likely to stay lost. Recent studies show that not all obesity is caused simply by overeating, although, in most cases this may have triggered it. Third, crash dieting throws your body system out of gear and therefore when you resume regular eating your metabolic system may not be behaving properly. In fact, with crash dieting, your body may be storing considerable fat, simply because your food is not being used or burnt properly.
Most crash diets are based on two assumptions. First, diets do not effect the speed at which the body works, i.e. the metabolic rate. And second, weight lost on a crash diet is mostly fat. On the contrary, it is usually water or muscle. That is why to achieve a permanent weight loss you must:
- lose weight in small steps
- with food intake control, not with supplements, powders or machines
- complement this with regular exercise.
Remember that retention is all about sticking to your diet plan. The challenge lies in maintaining those shed kilos. Sustainability and not fads is the key to permanent weight loss. Adjust your lifestyle to your diet, and see the emergence of a new fitter you.
