Diets for Weight Loss

One of the most important ways in which to maintain a good level of overall physical health is for a person to keep a watch on what they eat and drink. Diets for weight loss are useful in this area.

diets for weight lossIt is only when this simple rule is not observed that people start to run into trouble and see their weight increase along with a related decrease in their overall health.

It often happens that it is only once this has become a real problem does the person decide to do something about it.

The common fix usually takes the form of a specially crafted, healthy, low calorie diet of some description.

Does Dieting Work?

While many dieters trying to lose weight with a diet program of their choice are able to successfully lose the excess pounds in a reasonable period of time, there are many more who fail to do so and quit in frustration, often blaming the diet for their failure to move the scales in the right direction.

Others may successfully lose some of the fat, but as soon as they stop dieting, all the pounds they lost comes right back on again. Whatever the cause of a failed diet, whether it be a simple failure to complete a diet with little or no weight lost as a result, or a successful diet followed closely by a return of the lost pounds, the outcome leaves the person feeling let down and unhappy with the effectiveness of all weight loss diets.

As such, they are often reluctant to start another, different diet for fear it will be just as ineffective as the last one they tried.

What is the Solution?

Fortunately, there is a solution and it is often far simpler than many people realize. This lies not so much in blaming a faulty diet, but by taking a different approach and admitting that the diet was not at fault, but the dieter!

That is a hard pill to swallow for many people, but the truth in most cases is that the diet was not to blame, but that the dieter did one of several things wrong.

Let's take each of these reasons for diet failure and look at them in more detail, while providing some ideas on how the problem can be avoided.

Failure to Follow a Diet

All diets will come with some instructions that need to be followed closely for the diet to be effective. Often, dieters believe that the can bend those rules to fit their own tastes and can actually derail their own diet by substituting ingredients that they think will be all right.

One of the worst offenders in this case is not drinking enough plain water but substituting soda or diet soda and thinking that it will be all right.

It won't!

Regular soda is loaded with sugar and a can may contain as much as 400 additional calories. Diet soda contains the artificial sweetener aspartame and while it adds no additional calories, this sweetener is known to affect the way in which the brain registers hunger and can actually make a person crave high calorie savory snacks such as potato chips or nachos for instance which temptation they often cave in to.

Other ill thought out substitutions include believing a large portion of something is no worse than a small portion, or that it's okay to eat bread with a meal even though it's not on the "allowed ingredients" list.

Expecting the Diet to Lose the Weight

One of the many misconceptions about diets is that when a dieter eats all the food on their diet sheet and does nothing else to help themselves, they will lose a great deal of weight in any case because that's what they believe will happen. This is a mistake that is often made.

However, it is almost an imperative that when a person undertakes a calorie restrictive diet to lose weight, they should make some effort to make it as effective as possible by doing some daily exercise to boost their metabolism and drink lots of plain water to help stay hydrated and aid digestion of the diet meals for maximum conversion of the food into energy that can be burned by the body and not stored as additional fat.

Cheating on a Diet

A higher proportion of diet failures can be attributed to cheating than most other reasons, although few will ever admit to the practice! Yet it happens because people like to eat certain things and when they are deprived of them during a diet, they crave them all the more.

Many cannot bear the craving and cave into their desires by sneaking that slice of chocolate cake or that candy bar of that packet of potato chips when they think no one is looking and then swear that they did not eat it!

Unfortunately, the only person a cheat is cheating is themselves. Their diets will often produce little or no appreciable fat loss and rather than admit to the real reason for this, the cheating dieter will blame the failure squarely on the diet.

Choosing the Right Diet

This last problem is easily correctable by first doing some research on the diet that has been chosen as the preferred slimming solution. Many people are tempted to sign up for big name traditional or home delivery diets such as Nutrisystem, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers or Medifast for instance because they saw a particularly attractive television commercial or an ad in a magazine and they thought the diet plan would be right for them.

Unfortunately, advertisements for diet programs never provide all the details a potential dieter will need in order to make an informed decision as to whether the diet is actually right for them or not. Some initial research on diet and health is the best way to circumvent this problem.

There are many reviews freely available online that will provide more information on the nature of each diet and its good and bad points so that the dieter is better informed as to the true nature of the diet. Armed with more substantial information, a dieter is better placed to make that decision and choose a diet that is better suited to their personal needs, circumstances and tastes.

Getting things right from the start of a diet can make all the difference between a successful diet and an abject failure. Make the right choices and decisions and enjoy a successful weight loss diet to reach planned targets in good time and with pleasing results.