There is a lot of bad information available today regarding weight loss. Well meaning friends, family and co-workers, very often don’t really have the correct information. If you take advice from the wrong person you will waste your time, you won’t see the results you really want, and it could be dangerous to your health.
If you talk to your banker or accountant you will probably get answers, but the problem is they are likely to be the wrong answers. Even if some weird diet ‘plan’ worked for someone it doesn’t mean it will work for you; it doesn’t mean it’s good for you and it doesn’t mean it will allow you to keep the weight off permanently. A healthy weight loss plan will allow you to maintain a healthy weight for the rest of your life. The next time you want diet advice, ask a professional.
Here are some facts you need to keep in mind when choosing a good diet plan:
1. Dieting has two purposes: achieve specific weight and maintain a controlled weight. Others do it for gain muscle, but let’s focus on weight loss here. You will do this mostly by regulate your foods intake and perform certain exercises sessions in regular basis.
2. There are many extremely low calorie (800-1000 calories a day) diet plans around today such as low carb diet, low fat diet, low calorie diet, etc. If the plan you are considering encourages you to cut your daily caloric intake to such extremely low levels you should consult your doctor before you start.
3. Losing weight with the right diet plan isn’t really all that hard, the hard part is sticking to the plan and maintaining your weight loss. Only 20% of the people who lost weight and met their goals were able to keep it off for a year.
4. Cutting your calories to extremely low levels seems to be a very popular weight loss method, the problem is that it won’t be permanent. Your body is equipped to protect itself from starvation. One of the defense mechanisms a body has is the ability to slow the metabolism way down when it thinks it’s starving, this will bring any weight loss to a stand still. There are some diet plans available that have methods to overcome this problem.
5. If you are under 18 or are suffering from a chronic illness make sure to consult with your doctor before starting any diet plan, especially those that are very restrictive on the foods that they allow. A good diet plan will have the proper nutritional balance of fats, proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, dietary minerals, and water.
6. Not all diet programs includes exercise in its to-do-list; in fact, you still can lose weight without it with fad diets such as grapefruit diet or cabbage soup diet, but you will absolutely need exercise to maintain your weight. So unless you have really good reasons to pick such diet program, I suggest you take the one with exercises to lose weight and maintain it.
7. If you lose weight, it may be in the form of fat loss, water loss, or muscle loss. You will want to aim for fat loss while maintain your muscle by doing workout. Remember that a person with more muscle will burn more calories even when he’s doing nothing.
8. There are various drugs used in the weight loss industry, most of them are appetite suppresser to make you eat less and lose weight. This is not a part of recommended healthy dieting; you don’t want to carry around diet pills for the rest of your life to maintain your weight. However, if you are really tempted to try it, stick to the recommended dose and beware for various side effects.
9. Many people have had great success by keeping a food journal and tracking everything they eat daily. It is very easy to eat the wrong foods or bigger portions and not even realize you’ve done it. By writing everything down you can keep track of your eating habits and triggers that may encourage you to over eat.
10. Fasting can be an effective tool in weight loss, but it does have its risks if not done correctly. If you are considering trying fasting as a method of weight loss make sure to consult with your doctor first.
You don’t need to resort to getting dieting advice from your cousin Billy. He may genuinely want to help but most people simply don’t really know the best way to lose weight. If you feel you need help with weight loss your best bet is to ask a professional for the best, and safest, way to lose weight…permanently.
Start your dieting journey by gaining basic knowledge by Stefan Vincent on how to identify a healthy diet among thousands other diets. The next step is selecting the one that work best for you; check the tricks to do this in Diets That Work.
