Why diets don’t workSure, if you strictly follow one for say 3-6 weeks most people lose weight All diets restrict calories and the amount of food allowed The equation is simple and you can’t ignore it. If you put in less food and you burn more energy that came in from the food you will lose weight, until you stop doing it. But then what? Most people just go back to eating the same way as they did before and expect to lose more weight or at least stay the same. Well fairy tales are fun but this one is a nightmare. Fads often promote ideas that are unsafe.
The easy and honestly the only way, is to eat simple food and only as much as you need. Most of us in the western world just eat too much. We eat food with too much energy in it, calories that we don’t need and funnily that makes us feel as though we haven’t got any energy. We need to keep our metabolism going at a nice balanced rate, not too fast and not too slow. The American Medical Association found that eating low calorie food that had a low GI (glycemic index) and released energy into our blood nice and steadily is less likely to slow our metabolic rate and is also good for our heart health. If you are eating fewer calories your body adjusts and slows down energy use. It thinks it is heading towards starvation, so it tries to hold on to whatever reserves it has. What happens is that you actually start to feel hungry and find it hard to avoid eating. If you give in, weight loss stops. It is likely that your body has a favourite weight. This may be due to genetics but our behaviour and environment may be just as important. Remember we are all different so we really should be looking for what foods and style of eating suits us, not following the latest fad called ”the best diet for everybody”. It has been found that a diet of foods that do not cause a rapid rise in blood glucose levels is less likely to trigger the body resisting weight loss. An example of this is comparing eating a cheeseburger and soda, a high calorie, high GI type of meal with say rolled oatmeal and a couple of glasses of water, a lower calorie, low GI meal. To most people the first one sounds and tastes great but it is the type of meal that will kill you if that is what you think is normal and you eat like that most of the time. You may not like the idea of totally changing what and how you eat but the evidence is pretty hard to deny.
If you start eating simpler and less processed foods, your weight loss happens with less of a drop in resting energy expenditure and less hunger. This suggests that weight loss should be easier to do and hold over time with a low glycemic diet. The evidence shows that simple and low GI eating protects your heart health and gets you to your correct weight.
What is Insulin Resistance? - Why Low GI Diets? Why stick with diets that don’t work?All rights reserved |