Facts and Erroneous Facts

Why are most diets unsuccessful?

Many people pay attention to what they eat and four times a week they sweat out in a gym, but the scale don’t appear to show progress losing weight. So, why does it not seem to work?

Time and time again, everybody falls into the same trap, in our opinion.

Trap #1 - “I messed up my diet so I don’t really care what happens anymore.”

The person on the diet persuades himself, that he/she has to behave, and to eat properly. Cereal in the morning, grilled chicken for lunch, salmon for dinner. No carbohydrates and definitely nothing sweet. Sometimes they feel that they have “fallen from grace into sin” by sampling just one of these “forbidden fruits”. They may have eaten a huge piece of cake at a birthday party and afterwards they think they have screwed up their diet for the day anyway so they may as well eat a nice big pizza and dessert in a restaurant as well.

IF YOU WANT TO FIGHT AGAINST BEING OVERWEIGHT THEN YOU HAVE TO CHANGE YOUR LIFESTYLE. In order to get to your healthy body weight you have to change your exercising habits as well as your eating habits. Sometimes you have to change the rules of how you run your life. Those eating habits, which maintain weight - loss, aim to reduce your total calorie intake.

A typical examples of lifestyle change versus overweight challenge: We had a piece of cake at a party and we thought that with this act we had ruined our entire day’s effort, so we consume other foods until we go to bed. What else could we do? After we had finished eating the cake we should have asked ourselves: “Do I feel better for eating this food?” Maybe there were more calories in it than you should have taken but it is not the end of the world. Later, at the dinner table, we could have refused food with starch and fill up our plates with vegetables instead. This way our diet is going to be more successful.

Trap #2 – I can relax the diet at the weekend or special times.

During weekdays we may be successful with our diet but weekends are more challenging.

Why does this happen? During the week we have a strict schedule so we eat in a healthier way. We usually have to eat breakfast quickly and we have to finish our lunch at our desks and dinners are quite healthy as food is prepared for the whole family. By Friday we have had enough of this routine and want to relax (and to relax our regime). A chocolate donut on Saturday morning, and… the avalanche has started.

TEST YOURSELF!  Use a B.M.I. calculator and measure your energy needs. Our aim should be to keep calorie intake at the level your body needs. We should have a healthy breakfast on Saturday morning as well. We don’t need to over indulge but some treats should not be forbidden. Let’s not think about food as good or bad for our diet. But instead think about them as a part of a balanced calorie intake every day.

Trap #3 - After exercising it doesn’t matter what we eat.

30 minutes on a running machine, half of it at walking pace, the other half, sweating hard. A person on a diet may think they can eat whatever they want after that. After all, running burns calorie more than anything else so it is a good method to cause calorie deficit. This is not a miracle weapon though because you also have to pay attention to what you eat! An average person can burn 100 calories during a 1.6 km run. If you run and walk alternately 30 minutes on the running machine you use 250 calories. This is the equivalent in calories to a donut with icing. The solution, if you are hungry after training, is to drink water and eat food with a high protein content. This way your stomach is not going to be empty and you won’t feel the need to over eat at the next meal.