The Advantages of Slow Dieting

There is a certain mentality that says fast improvement is best for health situations. This conclusion doesn't necessarily stand up.

Let's take the example of weight loss. I just saw an ad that said, "Take off 21 pounds in 30 days." What do you think of that? Should one take off twenty pounds in a month?

Wouldn't most of us opt for this fast route? Get it over. Look good, feel good and regain health all in just 30 days!

Have you known anyone who did that? And if you have, how did they seem four months later? There's the rub - fast loss leads to fast gain.

Check out some celebrities who've promoted the latest diets. Skinny one month and balloons a few months later.

Ask yourself how come there are hundreds and hundreds of diets floating around.

Many of these diets call for entirely different foods. One is high on protein. Another is high on carbohydrates. This or that diet. Cabbage soup diet. Grapefruit diet. Macrobiotic diet. On and on.

The major reasons that most of these diets don't work long term are,

1. Not all bodies are the same. What's beneficial for one person may not be so for another.

2. Most diets do not contain what you want to eat. You can't wait to lose that twenty pounds so you can go back to eating what you enjoy.

3. Most diets are not healthy, so you end up malnourished while on them. Bodies are incredibly complex with millions of biochemical reactions occurring within them. These reactions require a wide variety of foods to supply all the factors necessary to run successfully.

4. During a fast weight loss diet, your body adjusts to ride out being starved, then when you finally begin feeding it normally again, it packs on the weight in anticipation of future starvation.

Fast weight loss diets work against health for the above reasons.

So if we don't take the fast route, what road do we travel? You guessed it - lay back and cruise the two lane highways. Take that extra two days to get to LA.

This particularly holds true with high blood pressure diets where slow dieting is wise dieting, being effective in producing normal blood pressure.

Nevertheless, the slow method has its downside: No one will admire your suddenly shapely figure. You can't decide to go on a diet in June for your beach trip in July. After three months, your best friend will still urge you to join her or him on the latest fad diet sweeping the country. You won't be able to brag. People won't be able to admire the suddenly slender you.

Still when you step on the bathroom scale and see that you have lost two tenths of a pound five weeks in a row, you will smile with self assured confidence that you are controlling your future health. You will know where you are going. You will drive the car to LA.

When you get to LA, you will have permanently changed your diet and your health. You will live longer.

The slow diet is not a canned "miracle" diet. To do it requires persistence and knowledge because only you can make it work.

Too much weight is unhealthy. It leads to various illnesses that usually begin unnoticed in middle age.

Sudden weight loss is unhealthy, too. It shocks the body. The body doesn't like that and tries to defeat you.

So, let's not obsess on weight loss. Relax, educate yourself, and take the slow road to health.

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