If you are like 90% Americans, then you want to lose weight. And in that quest to lose weight you are likely to have tried a number of various different methods, even tried a fad diet or two perhaps which have not worked.
With the number of diets and weight loss programs out there, it is no wonder that many of us turn into serial dieters. Periodically we are told of a new diet that promises great results, and we are tempted to try it. If it doesn’t work or you don’t like it, some of us move on to the next diet and then on to the next diet until we turn into serial dieters!
Serial dieting is a vicious cycle: you get into a diet, it does not work, and you get disheartened.
The other scenario would be that it does work; you lose weight and subsequently lose interest in it.
So, either you lose weight or you don’t lose the weight. But in either scenario you go off the diet, and revert to your previous eating habits.
Both ways it is back to square one so that you are soon looking to the newest fad diet to latch on to. Ergo, a serial dieter is born. So how can you get out of this vicious cycle?
Learn to look beyond the advertising: It is easy to get taken in by product marketing, the beautiful, slender models, the promise of ‘proven’ results etc. But consider that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
A while back, for instance there was the cookie diet which sounded great: you eat cookies and still lose the weight. However, the diet was found to be very extreme, you could eat only 4 cookies a day and not just any cookies either. Some very expensive cookies were all you could eat and then they tasted like cardboard!
Learn about nutrition: It always helps to be informed about things and this is never more true that when it comes to nutrition. It pays to know the contents of what you eat, how that is digested and metabolized by the body, what is stored as fat and what is excreted, the best time to eat a particular thing, etc. Understand how the organs of the body function.
Learn what works for you: We all know how some things seem to work so well for one person and then seem not to work at all for another. This is because of genetics, personal lifestyles, habits, and other factors.
So given your particular set of factors, see what works for you. For instance studies have shown that low carb diets work extremely well for one type of person, whereas for another type of person, only a low fat diet will help to lose weight.
Make a lifestyle change: There is no way around this, the only way to lose weight and keep it off is to make a lifestyle change and stick with it.
