Nutrition
How often have we heard I lost 30 pounds in 30 days by only eating bacon and drinking lemon juice with cayenne pepper or some other fad and that you should try it too!
Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. There’s also no healthy way to change your body without incorporating sustainable lifestyle changes.
If you want to lose weight, get in shape or just feel better about yourself, changing your nutrition intake is just one component of the fitness formula.
The best way to both achieve and, most importantly, maintain, the results you’re looking for is by committing to a lifestyle change that incorporates healthy eating and regular physical activity.
“We tell our patients that healthy living is like learning a different language or musical instrument,” says CRCHC Physicians. “You have to have the motivation to speak the new language or play the new instrument and you have to practice every day. You have to put in the effort and be patient, because one day you’ll get the results you want.”
Long-term over short-term: There’s a reason most fad diets promise results in 30 days or less. It’s human nature to be attracted to the quick fix – the longer something takes, the more work that’s involved. But it’s precisely these promised fast results that should elicit alarm bells in your head.
“Such diets limit your nutritional intake, can be unhealthy, and tend to fail in the long run,” said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The key to achieving and maintaining a healthy weight isn’t about short-term dietary changes.”
In fact, one study found that nearly 70 percent of people who tried fad diets regained all of the weight they lost, with some even gaining more weight that they started with.
It may not be lightning fast, but the long-term approach of changing your lifestyle will yield results that are healthier and far more substantial over time.
Don’t just cut out, add on: When you think about changing your diet, the first thought is usually about cutting out all of the bad things you eat. But it doesn’t have to be all about subtraction.
While you probably should try to cut back on the desserts or high-fat snacks, you should also try to expand your dietary repertoire by adding in new fruits and vegetables to your daily meals. Bananas, apples and oranges are good staples, but mix in a mango, pineapple or kiwi every now and then. Finding new, nutritious food options can make eating healthy so much easier.
Commit to the bit: If you’re not all in on making lifestyle changes, odds are you’ll go back to your old habits pretty quickly. Committing to exercising 30 minutes a day when you haven’t been to the gym in over a year or eliminating sodas from your diet when you regularly drink three Diet Cokes a day can be daunting, but it will be worth it in the long run.
The best advice is to set realistic goals and adopt patterns that you can sustain for a lifetime, instead of temporary quick fixes. As long as you continue to maintain your new lifestyle changes, you’ll remain on the road to creating the healthiest, best version of yourself!
Eating a nutritious will help you live a healthier and better life. Healthy eating helps us to maintain a healthy weight and reduces our risk of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and the risk of developing cardiovascular disease and some cancers. For more information on how you can improve your health schedule an appointment 704-792-2242.