If you’re like most people, you can’t avoid news on the newest, best way to lose weight that has been endorsed by all the celebrities, your co-worker, and your friend’s friend. We’ve seen them all through the years — Paleo diet, Southbeach diet, Slimgenics, Atkins diet, Volumetrics, raw food diet, macrobiotic diet, the list goes on. What’s the problem with most fad diets? Well, they simply don’t last. Many will give you immediate results, and occasionally they will work, but if you want lasting, healthy weight loss results, doing it “the right way” will benefit you much more than any fad ever could. Here are a few reasons fad diets don’t last.
Fad diets focus on quick results.
Many fad diets have rules that require you to make big changes very quickly. This means you often get immediate results and have a false sense of them “working” to begin with, but they are often very hard to stick to. You see the results up front, but then as you continue, it’s harder and harder to maintain and when you stop seeing as drastic of results, it’s easy to fall off the wagon and eat even more unhealthily than you were before. Want to do the Atkins diet? Awesome, you can lose weight very quickly and learn nothing about clean eating. You’ll ingest way too much fat, increase your cholesterol, and potentially damage your kidneys from massive protein loads and muscle wasting. Sure, you will lose the weight, but it’s not the healthy way and there are consequences; not to mention, you will gain the weight back.
Fad diets give rules without changing behavior.
Most fad diets are based on a set of rules you have to follow. Certain foods you can or cannot eat, amounts of caloric intake or food groups to be consumed, and even an order in which you are supposed to eat things. This gets you focused on all the cans and cannots of your diet rather than simply focusing on making healthy changes that are right for your body and health goals.
Fad diets don’t provide the proper nutrients.
The majority of fad diets have you consuming food based on a list of rules rather than what your body actually needs. It’s important in any person’s diet to eat a variety of foods from multiple food groups, and the actual amounts needed may vary based on many factors. Whether you’re male or female, your current vs. target weight, muscle bulk vs. leaning out, how many calories you’re burning, how active you are, etc.; are all important to consider when creating a nutrition plan.
Many fad diets hyper focus on certain foods.
As mentioned above, getting a variety of nutrients is important. Several fad diets out there like Atkins, the grapefruit diet, Southbeach diet, etc. tend to have you eating a lot in certain food groups while cutting out other important ones. While it may sound great that you could eat all the bacon and cheese you want while cutting out a lot of produce in the name of losing weight, many of these extremes can be horrible on your body. After just a few days into your diet you find yourself feeling miserable because your body isn’t getting what it needs, and you are actually starving your body of the things it needs to make you healthy. You may see a drop in pounds on the scale, but when you go off, your body has gone into starvation mode and will simply store calories as fat rather than building fat-burning muscle that will benefit you for much longer.
How to Lose Weight the Right Way With Vitality Health
So now we know the wrong way to do it — what about “the right way” to lose weight? Here are a few things we do differently to help guide you in your weight loss journey at Vitality Health.
No Diets — Eat Food In Moderation
What we do is not a diet — it’s not a fad as it is proven to last. At Vitality Health we combine real food in simple moderation with basic science and nutrition and FDA approved medications to get significant results that are proven to last.
Assessment From Board-Certified Doctors Who Specialize in Weight Loss
There aren’t many doctors out there who are board-certified in obesity medicine, although this number is greatly increasing as this field takes shape in the USA and even across the world. We offer nutritional counseling and education along with prescription medications, when needed. Many family doctors don’t have the training that we have in weight loss, nor the knowledge of these medications. Vitality Health is different because we combine these specialties in these two areas together so we can be the ultimate backing to help you lose weight that stays off.
Evidence-Based Weight Loss Medication
We use evidence-based medicine and prescription medications to help patients lose weight. Because we combine support from a practitioner who specializes in weight loss methods along with the backing of our medical education, we are able to prescribe medication to fit your specific needs.
Frequent Weight Loss Support
Most diets work for about 3 months (or less) before people quit them for a variety of reasons. When it comes to weight loss support, frequency is key. We often spend an hour with a patient on first consult, followed by weekly for 1 month, biweekly for 6 months, then monthly for 12 months, if needed. This is an intense program that actually works. Studies show that behavioral modification alone doesn’t work and that at 5 years, 70% of patients will end up at their beginning weight or even higher.
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