Why Fad Diets Don’t Work & How to maintain your weight loss
Countless times I have encountered individuals who’s weight loss Yo-Yo’s wildy from month to month depending on which plan they are on or off the wagon from. It’s fairly typical behaviour and I think stems largely from people’s need of the quick fix.
You’ve let yourself get out of shape and your “normal” eating/drinking (and exercise) habits cause you to gain weight at a rapid rate – and here is a very simple truth – if you eventually plan to go back to eating “normally” then you are going to quickly put any weight lost straight back on.
At some point you have to accept that your normal eating isn’t actually normal.
This doesn’t mean you have to try out a plan that will cause you to only lose weight slowly (although there is nothing wrong with this), but simply you have to accept that rapid weight loss is only really doable for a relatively short time frame. For me personally I’ve never been able to do strict dieting for more than 2 months.
Once you’ve planned out your rapid weight loss period you should always plan ahead to the future to go onto a maintenance or slow weight loss plan – otherwise you’re going to lose your mind from being in a big calorie deficit for too long. Furthermore you should approach any plan without completely cutting any one food group from your diet – for example cutting carbs or fat completely out of your diet is just pointless and will lead to you falling off the wagon completely.
For example if you weigh 11stone and you want to lose a stone in 6 weeks – that’s totally achievable but would be considered pretty rapid weight loss. You’re certainly unlikely to get down to your long term target in such a short time frame.
For example an 11 stone woman might plan to eat 1250kcal the first 6 weeks of her diet plan, helping her lose that first stone in rapid time. Then you might want to treat yourself to a blowout night-out then next week start on a 1600kcal diet. A significantly higher calorie intake but still effectively losing weight at a slower rate, allowing for much more wiggle room and overall sanity with the eating/drinking. Once she’s happy with her weight she could then consider eating something around the 1800 point to maintain her current weight.
This kind of approach may seem fairly obvious for some of us, but if you choose a diet plan that has absolutely no after plan then all the initial effort was for nothing!
The take home message of this article is to have a plan for after your weight loss and aim for sustainability after an initial period of rapid weight loss, no one can sustain a rapid weight loss diet for long!
Joe Birch
Better Body Group, Sevenoaks
