It’s the beginning of January, and it’s difficult to avoid all of those ‘New Year, New You’ type of articles. It’s a natural time of year for assessing where we’re at, and often this includes our health and fitness.
After the indulgences of the festive season, many people are exploring ways to lose weight, and unfortunately this leads to a lot of ‘experts’ popping up on the internet promising to offer a diet that will deliver almost instantaneous results.
However, these diets are rarely based on scientifically proven methods, and can even be harmful to your health. Here’s a look at what really works for sustainable weight loss. If you would like more specialised advice, please consider working with our nutritionist coach in Birmingham.
Missing meals is the quickest way to lose weight
People often want a short-cut to weight loss, and the quickest route seems to be skipping meals. While this may work as part of an intermittent fasting diet, it needs to be based around a well-balanced meal plan that will not leave you feeling weak and fatigued.
If you simply reduce your meals from three to one or two per day, you are likely to make yourself tired, hungry and irritable. This will affect your performance at work and generally make life a misery, so do yourself a favour and plan very carefully if you want to take this route.
Chances are, you will overcompensate for the lost calories by snacking on unhealthy foods or eating larger portions at other times when you do eat a meal. This will mean all your suffering is for nothing, and you may even put on more weight. The best approach is to eat when it suits you, but focus on healthy ingredients and portion control.
Certain diets will cut out belly fat or shrink bingo wings
If you have a particular area of your body that you are dissatisfied with, you may be drawn to diets that claim to target belly fat or slim your arms or legs. However, while it’s possible to tone up these areas with exercise, no diet can remove fat from one specific area of the body alone. Weight loss will occur from all areas, although some stubborn deposits may remain.
You need to cut out fat and carbs
Dieters are often told to cut out carbs and fat to lose weight fast. However, this is likely to leave you bored of your meals and lacking in energy and vital nutrients. A well-balanced weight loss-diet doesn’t need to involve cutting out certain food groups.
Be particularly suspicious if the source of the advice is also encouraging you to buy supplements to compensate for missing nutrients. Instead, focus on including complex carbs such as brown rice and whole grains, rather than white bread and white pasta or pastries and cakes.
Similarly, unsaturated fats that are found in foods such as avocados, nuts and olive oil play an important role in nutrition, and also help us to feel fuller for longer, reducing the temptation to snack. However, for weight loss it is important to avoid excessive consumption of saturated fats that are found in many ultra processed foods, dairy and red meat.
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