Crash diets don't work

Here’s why crash diets don’t work. The body has a harmonious relationship with its environment.

To put that into the context of weight loss, creating a lower than usual food intake that is: moderate (not severely low), consistent (the same every day), and nutritious, the body will help you to lose weight.

The body will actively reduce in size, including the amount of fat that it stores, in an effort to harmonise with its environment.

If you’re overeating one day, crash dieting the next, either purposefully or accidentally (like the result of a mad weekend), your body will try to harmonise with that environment. This environment is characterised by inconsistency. So the body will try to hold on to its fat stores because if recognises the unpredictability of nutrition.

Being consistent is the secret

You won’t gain weight with a single bad day. You can’t lose weight with a single good day. The body doesn’t work like that. It will happily absorb spikes such as these one offs.

Healthful weight loss can’t be forced. It shouldn’t be painful. The hardest part of the journey should be meal planning and adherence. If you’re ravenous hungry all the time, you’re doing something wrong. Although, in the first day or two there can be an appetite adjustment, after this, once the consistency of the program sets in, it should be easy.

It should be easy because the body will always try to harmonise with its environment. It doesn’t want to fight with its environment. If your food restriction is moderate and you’re really suffering with hunger, then look at the nutritional content of your diet. Elevating the nutritional content of your diet, making healthier choices, reduces the appetite naturally.

Your lifestyle is your environment. It’s not what you eat today, or what you had for tea last night. It’s not that you worked through lunch because you were too busy. Your lifestyle is what you do every day. It’s what you repeat week in and week out.  If you eat a bar of chocolate and crisps every night watching the TV, your lifestyle is unhealthy. If you do it once per week, your lifestyle is on balance good.

Weight loss shouldn’t be hard. The key is getting the body to help you do it. 

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