So many people enter the new year wanting to get fitter or lose weight, but to ensure you lose weight and keep it off, a sustainable diet and exercise plan is the best way.
According to a poll by YouGov, 44 per cent of British people want to lose weight over the next 12 months, and because of this, many people have opted for an extreme or restrictive diet to lose weight quickly.
However, these diets often make it harder, if not impossible to maintain weight loss, and can sometimes lead to weight gain. Here are some of the key reasons why.
Too Restrictive
A common trend of fad diets is that they exclude foods or sometimes entire food groups, which creates all sorts of problems. These include diets like the cabbage soup or grapefruit diet (which are effectively low carbohydrate diets) and the raw food diet (which doesn’t allow any cooked foods).
Most weight loss in these diets is water weight, and eating the same food each day can create cravings that lead to breaking a diet.
A healthy diet should focus on variety rather than repetition.
Relationship With Food
Many diets that focus on what you can’t eat rather than your relationship with food and nutrition are doomed to failure because they make certain foods a taboo to be craved.
Extreme low-calorie diets are particularly bad in this regard because they also cause your body to act like it is starving and lower your metabolism, causing the weight loss to plateau quickly.
The best diets are realistic, fit in with how you live your life and focus more on moderation and balance rather than restrictions and limits.
An 8-week online personal training course can help steer you on the right track and find out what works for you, as well as provide motivation and guidance.