Some Weight Loss Diets Are Too Strict To Be Realistic

Have you ever been on a crash diet? Many Americans experiment with one crash diet after another for many years of their lives, never quite managing to keep off the pounds. Crash diets have a way of raising false hopes. They certainly make you lose weight right at first, sometimes dramatically. Unfortunately, you usually gain the weight back just as fast as you lost it. You always find yourself back at your previous weight in a surprisingly short period of time.

You've probably heard of some of the more well-known diets that people are trying. The grape fruit diet was one of the first popular diets. The Atkins diet and other low-carb diets require you to get almost all of your calories from meat and fat. Some cleanse diets require you to consume only clear liquid juices. Other diets involve eating no meat, no fat, or none of either. Some diets require you to carefully count calories and food ingredients. Still other diets come with long lists of foods that you are not allowed to eat at all.

Although all of these diets may work for some people in certain circumstances, they are mostly unsuccessful for most people. The reason is that they are not realistic. Although you might be able to keep up an extreme diet for a while, you are not likely to be able to stick with it for very long. Even if you have amazing will power, your overall health is likely to suffer from any extreme diet, especially if the diet is low-calorie. Eventually, you have to get off the diet for health reasons.

A much better weight loss diet is sustainable. That means that you will be willing and able to keep it up consistently for a long period of time. A sustainable diet must be realistic in what it requires of you. On the basic level, that means that the food you eat have to provide you with all the nutrients that you need. Most extreme diets do not meet this basic requirement. Instead, they require you to limit certain foods and nutrients.

A realistic diet must provide you with sufficient calories to meet your daily energy requirements. Any diet that requires you to eat fewer than 1200 calories in a day is not meeting your calorie needs, and some people need at last twice as many calories as this.

A realistic diet gives you not only sufficient energy but also sufficient vitamins, minerals, and fats. (Yes, you need fat for brain function and many other important functions.) To get all of these nutrients, you need to eat a variety of foods, including fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and dairy products. A realistic diet will include a balanced but limited amount of all of these foods.

The good thing about a balanced diet is that it makes you feel satisfied, healthy, and strong. When you feel good, you are much more likely to keep up the diet and successfully lose weight.

Richard Bonn is the SEO Strategist behind Awesome Medical. Awesome Medical is the World's Largest Cosmetic and Plastic Surgery Network with directories for nonsurgical procedures like Botox to advanced procedures like Body Lift. For more information visit Plastic Surgery Marketing Guide.

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