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So we know we need to lose
weight, but how?
As the millions of us who have been on a diet and failed or lost pounds
only to put them back on again can testify, losing weight is hard.
But from a statistician's point of view, the equation is simple: to lose
weight you need to burn more calories than you take in.
To lose one pound of body fat a week, you need to reduce your calorie
intake by 3500 calories - 500 calories a day.
You can help weight loss along by increasing the amount you exercise and
so burn more calories, and you can eat different foods to achieve a
reduction, but the numbers remain the same.
Diet
or fad?
With this in mind, you'd expect most diets to roughly follow the same
lines. Yet walk into any bookshop and you'll see row upon row of diet
books based on anything from your blood type to your metabolism.
From the cabbage soup diet to detox diets and beyond, it seems there are
as many ways to lose weight as there are celebrities to endorse them.
And it's not just celebrities who love the variety these diets provide -
they appeal to the large numbers of us who struggle with our weight.
Yet it seems that every time one of these new diets comes along, experts
despair. The Atkins diet, in particular, with its focus on high protein
and low carbohydrates has attracted criticism from official bodies such
as the British Dietetic Foundation, the Medical Research Council and the
British Nutrition Foundation.
This may seem like posturing from over-bearing medics - after all, if
diets like Atkins mean people lose weight, doesn't this outweigh the
negatives?
Not
all diets are healthy
The trouble is, the advice about healthy eating isn't negated by the
need to lose weight. The guidelines about sensible eating still apply -
a diet shouldn't be a 'get out of jail free' card for these principles.
Put simply, you can do many things to lose weight - but this doesn't
mean they're good for you. And the problem with diets that exclude
certain foods altogether is they may be nutritionally inadequate in
certain areas, even if the diet is based on a 'healthy food' such as
vegetables.
This is because the cornerstone of healthy eating is a variety of foods
from five sources:
-
meat, fish and alternatives (eg tofu)
-
fats and sugars
-
fruit and vegetables
-
milk and dairy products
-
bread, cereal and potatoes.
Your daily intake should be made up from
foods in each of the five categories - but not in equal amounts. For
example, less than 10 per cent of your calories should come from sugars
- that's about 150-250 calories a day.
The rigid food plans that are common with many of
these diets can also be hard to fit into your everyday routine -
especially if you have kids, it can turn mealtimes into a juggling act.
There's also the added complication that the weight loss won't be
sustainable once you stop following the plan.
Lifestyle
change, not yo-yo dieting
Experts from
the the medical profession advocate lifestyle change as the only way to
lose weight and keep weight off. This is because unless you permanently
change your eating habits, the weight you lose will creep back on.
This diet-binge cycle is familiar to many of us:
diet for summer, put a bit back on in autumn, make an effort
pre-Christmas, only for the festive period to wipe out any achievements,
and so begin again in the New Year.
Permanent changes don't mean never eating
chocolate, sweets or fast food again, but it does mean limiting these
foods to occasional treats. You may need to switch to skimmed or
semi-skimmed milk for good, and keep things like butter and fizzy drinks
to a minimum.
If this sounds disheartening, it shouldn't - there
is room in a healthy diet for all these foods in moderation. The
weight-loss equation also works the other way: you need to eat an extra
3500 calories to put on one pound in weight.
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