What to do after your fad diet fails

man laughing at the salad

Photo: PHOTOCREO Michal Bednarek (Shutterstock)

Diets tend to fail, aAnd those who promise a quick weight loss by following a strange trick are especially doomed to failure. If you have just participated in one of them, do not just look for a different diet; instead, take a minute to reflect on what you’ve learned and make a plan to eat healthier future.

But before you even get to the tips we have below, consider using them this eating disorder screening tool from the National Eating Disorders Association to check your relationship with food and body image. NEDA also has a Telephone helpline which you can call or send text messages.

Deprogram yourself

Each fad diet comes with an explanation of why it is the best diet for you and why it will succeed where all other diets have failed. But no diet (or “way of eating”) has a magic secret that others have missed.

If you have followed the teachings of a particular guru, book or forum on the internet for a month or two, you are probably full of mythology in that diet. Write down some of the assumptions you’ve made – sugar is toxic or beans are high in nutrients, or high-fat yogurt is too high in calories to fit into a healthy diet or anything else – and in fact , find out if it is based on any scientific consensus.

real The truths about healthy eating are boring and obvious, just as vegetables are good and there are many ways to reduce your calorie intake. You can give up the rest.

Set realistic expectations

Fashion diets promise and often achieve faster weight loss than a regular old healthy diet. That makes them so appealing, but it’s also a story that doesn’t actually teach you how to eat better..

The scale fluctuates from day to day and it is not just about increasing or losing fat. The food you have in your belly weighs something; as well as water from all the tissues of the body, making it harder when you are older hydrated. If you eat a lot of carbohydrates, you will have more glycogen and water in your muscles; If you follow a low-carb diet, you will lose weight from that glycogen storage (carbohydrates). Meanwhile, if you have a menstrual cycle, you may find that you have a time of the month when you are heavier and a time when you are lighter.

For all these reasons,Long-term weight loss (or weight gain) does not always mean fat. If you lost five pounds in the first or two weeks of the crash diet, chances are very little of that was actually fatty-and you do not reverse your progress if at some point you regain it.

Over the weeks, if you lost weight quickly, you may have too he lost muscle mass along with fat. Muscle is important for overall health, as well as to allow you to exercise, so aafter your diet ends or fails, it isIt’s actually healthy to gain muscle back if you’ve lost too much.

Start from scratch

First, ask yourself if you actually need to lose weight and why. And if your reason is related to health, consider whether you might want professional help in setting goals and developing a plan.

All weight loss diets work the same way, ie giving you a framework to eat fewer calories than you burn. There are a lot of different ways to do this: you can count each calorie, you can reduce the amount you eat from certain food groups, or you can eat slightly smaller portions of regular meals, to name a few. Choose an approach that appeals to you. If you see a constant change in scale from week to week, you will know that it works.

If you want to track calories or macros, we recommend Chonometer over the most popular MyFitnessPal; its database is more accurate and its interface is much more usable and friendly.

He’s actually eating some protein

Many diets do not take protein into account, however Proteins are important for health and are especially important during fat loss. Make sure you eat enough of it and do a resistance workout to make sure you don’t lose too much muscle.

Eat all food groups

If you don’t get fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and foods that contain protein (such as meat or tofu) every day, you may be missing something from your diet. See the basics at myplate.gov rather than trying to make a living from only yogurt and salads (or, on the other hand, just beef and bacon).

Build good habits

Here’s where you can think about your fad diet experience. Did you find anything easy on that? Not difficult things, but you liked that sometimes …things that didn’t really bother you? Maybe you ate a ton of fruit, which you forgot how much you liked or maybe you drank less alcohol because of the calories, but you realized that you liked to sleep better and avoid hangover. If something is good for you and makes you happier, stick with those things.

On the other hand, you have probably built some bad habits in your accidental diet. Omitting meals, for example, ar declaration of certain foods completely prohibited. Or exercising too much (because you felt compelled to burn calories) or not enough (because you were too tired all the time). Give up unpleasant or unhealthy habits and keep the good ones.

Eating healthy can be less exciting than collapsing and burning on a fad diet, but you will be happier and healthier in the long run.

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