Tuesday 2 December 2014

Where to begin a weight-loss journey! Part 2: The Fad Diet Blackhole!!!!!

I like to think of myself as pretty smart but my god have I tried some fad diets!!!!!!!!! I think paired together with my studies I have enough experience to shed some light on some shockers.

First of all let me list what I have been sucked into.

Lemon detox diet, Tony Ferguson, Atkins, Isagenix, Low Carb, Low Calorie, Weight Watchers, The Daily 19hr Fast, Celebrity Slim and not to mention the money I have spent on sport supplements like Hydroxycut and other fat burners. Arghhh as the budget person in our family it pains me to think of the money spent!!!! There are many more but just can't think of them at the moment. I will update as I remember :) haha

There are two nutrition/health industries that have boomed to unfathomable heights. The diet industry and the supplement industry. Both of these feed on your fears of being overweight/unhealthy and coax you into buying expensive solutions that they are selling.

It's sad to think I started to diet when I was 14. So young to be worried about it!! I had a weight watchers book and started counting my points. Now I was never small/petite however on the other hand I was never overweight. I was a normal teenage girl who was extremely active and loved food :) It really is amazing how all through high school I always felt I was big compared to other girls and now when I look back at my school photos there was nothing wrong!!! I was perfectly fine. It's just such a difficult time as girls are all maturing and changing at different times plus I was in boarding school so I was surrounded by 200 girls all with their own weight/food issues/ideas going on.

You've probably heard that 80% of people that lose weight put it back on and it is true!!! A lot of the times this is due to the quick fixes or extreme diets undertaken. As soon as they have finished with the diet bad eating habits creep back in with vengeance! This is mainly because of the lack of learning that occurs with these diets. For example 'Lemon Detox' ten days of drinking nothing but water, flavoured with Maple Syrup, lemon and Cayenne pepper not to mention the 1L of salt water they recommend you having every morning to 'flush' the body. Of course you are going to lose weight when you aren't eating anything but you don't learn anything either!! Nothing about portion size or strategies to deal with cravings, your not taught how to read food labels and what clever marketing and packaging covers up. All these things are required for long term loss. 

Any diet that makes you rely on food/shakes that only they can provide is not a long term solution, it's a money maker. Getting started on something like Isagenix can be extremely expensive and then the monthly up keep can really burn a hole in your pocket. Now the push with Isagenix which is a similar to a pyramid marketing scheme is that if you then get your friends/family onto it you can save money as you get a kick back. Then if they on sell to their friends and family and so on and so forth you keep getting kick backs.  I can't stand these types of things. Firstly because it's all about fake friendly network that is pushed for more the financial gains than the health. Aside from that the ingredient lists on these shakes and all the other processed foods and supplements they sell should just make you think 'chemical nightmare!!!' All these artificial things your body is ingesting can have a negative reaction in the body and sometimes work against your weight loss efforts. Have you ever seen a photo of old school body builders?? Eg: Arnold Schwarzenegger. You will see their tiny waists. Nowadays the men have real barrel bellies! This has been show to be due to the protein shakes and supplements they are now consuming. Back to Arnie's day it was copious amounts of egg whites, chicken and steaks. REAL FOOD! Now the protein source is coming from a chemical nightmare! 

Just keep in mind if you choose to follow any diet lifestyle changes that don't continue to help you once you have finished then you need to put in the effort to research and find out how to cope afterwards otherwise you will end up doing exactly what you did beforehand as you haven't learnt anything other than how to follow someone elses diet plan. You need to have strategies in place to make sure all the effort you put into losing the weight doesn't go to waste.

Now I am not saying that any of the diets I mentioned don't help you lose weight. Of course they do but what I am saying is that most of them are not a healthy long term solution. The way they suck you into the back hole is that you get on board, lose the weight, go back to normal life and then the weight comes back on. SO what do you do? Join up again, buy all the stuff and start all over again. Not fun and not cheap!!

Why go to all the effort of losing that weight to go put it all back on again!!

I love seeing people happy and healthy and being successful on their weigh-loss journey. Whether is 2kg or 25kg. When it's an internal push to help people become healthy and live a happier life I find it so much more motivating than anything that potentially pedals money as the motivator. 

Check out my previous post on what guidelines should be in place when wanting to achieve long-term weight-loss.



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