This month Ashleigh Feltham from feedyourfuturedietetics.com discusses diets. Enjoy!
If you are like many people, you have tried and failed at least once on a diet. So, what went wrong and why is it so hard to gain and maintain results? Here are 3 common diet fails which are stopping you from achieving your results:
- You Follow a Fad Diet
How do you know if you are following a fad diet? It is a diet which is advertised as quick weight loss solutions, often with minimal effort. The people selling the diet are usually celebrities which can include celebrity chefs (I will not name names here).
Fad diets also tend to cut out whole food groups, this can mean cutting all carbohydrates (sometime classified completely under the term sugar) or cutting all fat is also a common trend. Alternatively, it could mean eating a single food group all day, so your body can theoretically metabolise it faster like chicken breast, soup, or lemon. What do fad diets all have in common?
They are all almost impossible to maintain as they cut the fun from food and often the social interactions and freedom which come from selecting a variety of foods. Often the number of calories or kilojoules these diets put you on are not individualised to your needs and this can leave you feeling like you ‘hit the wall’ at the end of every day and want to binge on cookies or your treat food.
The Solution:
Follow a balanced diet from all the food groups using the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating as a rough guide. If you want more specific advice, see the correct professional, an Accredited Practising Dietitian. These professionals have undergone years of study at university to be able to correctly meet your individual diet needs.
- Unbalanced Meals
Often meals that leave you feeling unsatisfied are imbalanced. This can mean completely illuminating or insufficiently eating a food group in your meal. If you do not have enough protein, you will be ravenous very quickly. If you do not get enough carbohydrates or grains, you may not feel like you have the energy to keep working as well as the fibre in wholegrains keeping you fuller for longer. Vegetables and fruits are low in energy, high in fibre keeping you full, high in many beneficial properties like antioxidants which can help you stay on top of your life and stay well.
The Solution:
Balance your meal! A balanced meal includes a quarter wholegrains, a quarter lean meat or alternatives like eggs or tofu and half of your plate fruit and or vegetables. For a snack the same components are important the plate size itself just needs to be smaller. For example, a snack could be a matchbox stick size slice of low fat cheddar cheese, with an apple and a couple of wholegrain crackers. A meal could be 100g of chicken breast with half a cup of brown rice or pasta with some stir fry vegetables lightly cooked in olive oil (a heart healthy monounsaturated fat).
- No Support or Structure
Often if you do not have a clearly defined goal you will fail. Why? You do not know where you want to go or how you will get there so how can you succeed?
The Solution:
With the help of an appropriate professional (see Solution 1) you can get the help and support you need to develop S.M.A.R.T goals. Small, measureable, achievable, realistic and time constraint goals. These will help you achieve small successes before you achieve your big goal and ultimate success. Why is this important? To keep you motivated and on the road to success, keep you consistent and make the routine a lifestyle which equals long term success!
Take Home Message:
Life is there to be enjoyed and if you are having to do extreme things to lose weight and achieve your goals ultimately it will lead to failure. Try these strategies and you may find you are able to achieve and maintain your nutrition and health goals.
Ashleigh.