Don’t let yourself get sucked in by diets that promise the world. If it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is. Carole Holditch, Nutritionist and Founder of Good Habits has very strong views on fad diets. She says, “Ask any nutritionist, dietician or health professional whether fad diets work, and I’m thinking you’ll get the same answer. No!”
Our obsession with our weight and appearance is seemingly without end. Far from abating, this obsession is gathering even more momentum, if our constant demand to try the latest weight loss trends taking Hollywood by storm is anything to go by.
Most of them stick to a basic formula that goes like this: the diet severely restricts your daily kilojoule intake but provides enough glucose to keep your most vital organ functioning: your brain.
Your body responds by tucking into stored energy reserves (enter fat) to keep itself going. However, in a masterstroke of evolutionary genius, because our muscles largely determine how much energy we need, our body also chews into our muscles to supplement the shortfall.
This way, it reduces the future demand for energy because, by putting yourself on a diet, you have just told it there is no more food coming and that it needs to set itself up to survive in the future on the new, reduced number of kilojoules available.
So, when you go back to normal eating, your body breathes a sigh of relief and replaces the fat and fluids - but not the muscle.
Therefore your reduced muscle content makes your body a less efficient kilojoule-burning machine and you end up weighing more than when you started dieting.
Sound familiar?
The only sensible way to lose weight is to go on a healthy eating plan and stay on it. A plan that gives your body enough kilojoules and all the nutrients that your body requires. Add in regular exercise and you have a formula that can be sustained!
For further information and details of Good Habits visit www.goodhabitsuae.com.