Dieting Slowly but Surely

You are standing in front of the mirror a week or so after the holidays or a particularly heavy food binge and you begin to notice that you’ve added quite some flab here and there. The pair of pants that used to fit snugly around your hips has started getting hard to fit in. The shirt that used to be quite loose now seems a bit tighter around the arms and the chest. There’s a noticeable paunch where the smooth stomach and belly used to be. You start to panic and you begin thinking how unattractive you are with your extra baggage. You think about the cost of changing your wardrobe and you’re ready to cry.

Then you hear about it on TV and your eyes acquire a new purposeful gleam. You are going on a diet that so-and-so is promoting. It promises you a loss of 10-pounds in two weeks or less. What can be better than that, huh?

Fad Diets: Harmful

Many dieters fall for the false hopes promised by hyped-up diet strategies. Some start to feel desperate that they become easy prey for unscrupulous individuals. Dieting is nothing close to cosmetic surgeries where changes can be seen quickly. It actually takes time to make it work and stick. One should not be easily swayed by get-thin-fast formulas that only promise temporary relief and may even cause harm to one’s body.

Many fad diets take out muscle mass instead of fats. Muscles are important in metabolism. But if the diet acts on the muscles, metabolism slows down and so does the fat-burning action that is a direct result of this process. Dieters should not lose sight of the means just because they want to get to the end the quickest way possible.

Diet Fads: Instant and Impermanent

Some diet fads propose a great and drastic reduction in food intake. For a time it could work. But time has proven that dieters will have a tendency to go back to their old ways of eating more because they have deprived themselves for too long. It is like slow death and one they cannot commit to permanently because it tests their control and discipline more than what they could handle.

The success of weight loss and diet programs stems from the fact that they are done slowly and methodically. Good diet programs start by working on substituting good food to the bad food, then progress to the proper amount of food intake. The change should be gradual and controlled so the dieters can still continue with their normal activities while slowly attaining the cloth size they want to go down to. This is an effective way of dieting because you will have a better chance of sticking to it eventually. It is something that you can adapt to over time.

And because you have adjusted to the diet with less negative effects on your daily activities, you’ll have the energy to exercise. People who go on crash diets generally feel weak and dizzy so they cannot do their exercises properly.

If you are intent on making yourself trim and fit, you should follow the permanently effective though slower way of losing weight instead of following quick-fix and temporarily effective faddish diet programs.

The author Rachel E. Smith is a Weight-Loss Guru.
You can read her Diet Pill blog at: Pill.cc