Popular diet secrets create unrealistic expectations and set you up to fail when you revert to a normal lifestyle!
Here’s why diet secrets can make you Fat… there are no diet secrets! Those magazines that you read about some skinny celebrity getting her pre-baby body back three minutes after giving birth are not real life! The diet secret is that they have the money and resources to use personal trainers 7 days a week, have access to nutritionists, cooks, cleaners, personal assistants and nannies. For the rest of us, the reality is that our best diet secrets are “Don’t eat chocolate at 3am” (unless it’s gourmet chocolate!) or “Weigh yourself when the moon is full”. Doctor Oz says that diet fads don’t work, so why would you waste your time with a quick fix?
The Real Diet Secrets
It’s all about what you do day to day. DO NOT DIET. Dieting does not work. Dieting can make you lose weight but without a permanent lifestyle change, the weight just goes back on when you revert to your normal “cake and wine” lifestyle. Worse, because you’ve starved yourself, your body hoards fat in case it gets starved again! Every time you crash diet, your body tries to hoard more and more energy, so you end up bigger than ever. So what do you do?
Create a New Normal
Obviously, your old “normal lifestyle” wasn’t working, so what you need to do is create a “New Normal”. For a healthy life, that means regular exercise, clean food and cutting back on all the bad stuff like binge drinking, drugs, cigarettes and 3am chocolate. Commit to the idea of living in a different way. What I’m saying is don’t rush out, run 10 miles and have a bowl of lettuce for dinner. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Get used to the idea of change, get excited about it, make plans and then act… slowly and with good information.
Find a form of exercise you can do at least three times a week that you enjoy. If you hate it, it won’t last. My Wife has been doing bootcamps to lose her baby weight and loves it, so maybe try that? If you’d rather train alone, maybe you could walk or swim? Find something that you enjoy enough to do regularly. If the first activity doesn’t work out, try something else. Don’t give up too easily!
Find your own Diet Secrets
It’s the same with food. Find food that is healthy and enjoyable. You can lose weight on diet shakes, but who wants to live on them!? If you don’t know much about nutrition, find some reliable sources and learn enough to make the right choices. Don’t fall into the diet secrets trap of cheating by eating foods that you know aren’t a healthy or balanced way to eat because they have only X calories.
If you’re unsure about how much you should eat, try an App called MyFitnessPal. You can add your friends to your account to see what they eat. It’s a fun/easy way to count calories and it will track your progress.
Try to eat clean, fresh food, not processed or pre-packaged food. Drink lots of water. The most important thing is that whatever you do to lose weight has to be something you can do permanently. If you can’t, the weight will go back on anyway.
I hope that these tips help dispel the diet secrets myth. Dieting short cuts only lead to disappointment. Go for it – you can do it!
