Going On A Diet
Top 5 Mistakes Dieters Make
Mistake #1 – GOING ON A DIET!
I know that sounds a little contradictory. Don’t dieters go on diets? Yes. They do. And that’s the #1 reason that they fail to lose weight and keep it off.
When someone goes “on” a diet, they are already insinuating from the beginning that this is something they will go “off”. Then what? When you go “off” the diet you revert back to old eating habits. Since 70 – 80% of what your body looks like is dependent on how you are fueling it, this means your body will go back to what it was before the diet. Meaning, you will gain back any weight that was lost (and typically a little extra!).
It’s true. Yo-yo dieters, who try trend after trend, fad after fad, typically gain a little more fat with every rebound. This happens for a couple of reasons. First, the diet that drops calories too low will cause muscle wasting, so in the process of losing weight as fast as possible, people also lose valuable lean muscle tissue, this is one way to slow the metabolism down. When the person returns to pre-diet eating behaviors, which typically means the return of higher calorie intake and unhealthy foods, they will gain fat weight back much more quickly. It’s detrimental to health, not only of your physical body, but mentally and emotionally too.
Diet trends and fads have red flags that you can be aware of. They typically promise fast results in a very short period of time, and usually claim that it takes little effort. They may promise that you will lose a certain number of pounds that would not be
Considered healthy fat loss (like 10 – 20 pounds in a week). Fad diets may cut out entire food groups (like carbohydrates), or have a very limited amount of food options, or encourage severely low calorie intake. Another red flag would be a fad diet that claimed spot reduction – for example that you will only lose belly fat. Beware of anything that focuses only on diet without an exercise component, a long term healthy lifestyle will consist of not only healthy eating habits but also of regular exercise habits.
Awareness of these red flags can prevent you from wasting money, energy and time on something that isn’t going to provide long term results.
There is a big difference between going on a diet, and developing healthy habits and a style of eating that you can sustain for life. Before you start anything, ask yourself this question, is this structure something that could be adhered to for life? If the answer is no, then you can cross that option off your list.
Is Hitch Fit a diet?
At Hitch Fit, our focus is on developing a healthy lifestyle, not on dieting or quick fixes. We believe that education is the key to achieving that goal. We want our clients to learn about the foods that they are putting in their body. Knowledge is the source of power and motivation. The more you know about the foods that you’re eating, the easier it becomes to make healthy choices!
Far too many people today think that they are eating “healthy”, because the package that their food came in said “healthy” on the label, or there was a picture of a green leaf or something along those lines. Our goal is to bring clarity to a cloudy marketplace, and shed the light on truth, even if it isn’t the most popular thing!
We don’t believe in cutting out food groups or starving people (in fact most people discover that they should be eating more food!). Hitch Fit nutrition plans are intended to be blue prints for how you can eat for the rest of your life. Structure and flexibility, the combination of those two are critical to a long term healthy eating strategy.
We work with clients for both transformation and maintenance phases. Nutrition wise, there are some differences, BUT the actual structure and style of eating, and the staples of healthy nutrition, do not change. When your goal is to transform your body, meaning you are trying to achieve a set, realistic fitness goal (and typically achieve a visual result), the best route to take is one that incorporates a healthy eating strategy along with regular exercise. Eating wise, being on point with nutrition enables you to get to your goals most efficiently and effectively. Once your body is where you want it to be, the key to maintaining it is keeping nutrition on track 80 – 90% of the time (varies per Person), variety of foods increases even more, and calories would gradually increase to a maintenance level. Reverting back to old eating styles and habits will mean the body goes right back to where it was! Exercise training volumes are typically progressive and higher (varies per person) when you are working towards a goal, for maintenance they reduce significantly, it doesn’t take hours in the gym to maintain a fit physique!
Bottom line: Don’t go on a diet. Focus on making healthy changes to your eating habits that are sustainable, and develop regular exercise (both strength and cardiovascular training) habits and plan on sticking with them for life. That is the ONLY solution for achieving and maintaining a fit and healthy body.
