SICK OF DIETING? TRY LOSING WEIGHT BY CHANGING YOUR LIFESTYLE

There is a difference between a simple diet, which typically only leads to temporary weight loss (with the weight often coming right back afterward) and a more permanent change in lifestyle. If you are having difficulty getting the results you want from typical dieting, it may be time to try something more permanent.

For many people, the idea of “going on a diet” has negative connotations – “diet,” after all, means depriving yourself and trying to resist cravings you would rather just give in to. This mentality sets you up for failure before you even begin.

Making matters worse, it can end up being more damaging, both to your health and to your self-confidence, to begin a diet and then quit than not diet in the first place. Some popular calorie-restriction diets that emphasize low carbs, for example, often result in dieters packing on pounds when they stop.

Unfortunately, the result for many dieters is that they end up falling into the all-too-common pattern of “yo-yo dieting, losing some weight, gaining it back, losing it again, and so on. This is not optimal for good health.

Instead of yo-yo dieting, the alternative is to look at weight loss not from the perspective of a temporary “crash diet” but rather a long-term change in lifestyle and habits.

This means avoiding “fad diets” that promise results from giving up one food group altogether or diets that restrict you from eating any of the foods you enjoy, both of which are not sustainable over the long term. In order to be successful and avoid falling into the yo-yo dieting trap, you need to find a nutrition plan that you can actually stick to.

You should instead try to develop a routine that works for you, allowing you to enjoy a balanced diet while keeping tabs on the overall number of calories you are consuming and doing your best to avoid unhealthy meals.

You should also apply the lifestyle-change mentality to your exercise routine – many dieters assume that they need to go to the gym everyday in order to see results, but this is not only untrue but also unsustainable, and again sets you up for failure from the start.

The alternative is to find activities you can do regularly that do not involve a time-consuming, exhausting trip to the gym, such as simply taking 30-minute walks a few times a week or taking the stairs rather than the elevator.

Just by making simple lifestyle changes, you can assure yourself steady results over time without feeling deprived or being tempted to quit, and over the course of a year you will almost certainly leave the yo-yo dieters in the dust.