(Image source from: pintrest.com)
It has been a long time myth for everyone that trying different diets can help one lose weight. However, after proper and due research, it has finally been determined that diets are not only not good for you but can also be harmful. Here are 5 reasons as to why should say no to diets and yes to alternate and healthier eating instead.
1. Diet’s do not work. Period.
You might have seen people go on diets but have you noticed that they actually regain more weight than lose what they intended to? Well research confirms that the pounds you lose during the beginning of a diet are temporary. What comes after that will be you gaining not only what you have lost but double of that. A study at UCLA shows that among 31 people who were on a diet. Only four or five were able to lose weight and that too around 10% only. The majority of the group regained their lost weight plus more. So if you are still considering a diet, either you are lazy or unmotivated or something is actually wrong with this diet system.
2. Dieting has a negative effect on your mental and physical health
When you go on a diet, your body weight keeps fluctuating. This weight fluctuation can bring a lot of side effects which will harm both your physical and mental health. Still do not think diets do serious damage? Diets have been linked to increase your body’s risk to heart diseases, diabetes and high blood pressure. In terms of mental health, the psychological impact is scarily alarming. Dieters are more prone to elevated cortisol which is the stress hormone. Diets also cause you to binge eat more due to stress. Another study stated that the younger the age at which the woman starts dieting, the more prone they are as an adult to indulge in self harm, alcohol abuse and self-induced vomiting. This disheartening fact should be more than an enough reason to stop you or anyone you know from going on diets.
3. Your body knows what it needs better than a diet. Diets are a punishment not a blessing.
Eating is something every single individual on this planet does. No one is born with a calculator that counts calories. We are just told what to eat and what not to eat. When you were a child, you discovered foods that you will like and dislike. As you grow older, these tastes change either occasionally or constantly. Before you grew up, food was just food. Whether the food was healthy or not, if it tasted good you ate it. This is how you should continue to think and eat when you grow older. The only difference is that you eat more of what are healthy in the right quantities, creating a balanced diet for yourself. Otherwise if you are in the mood for something that is not particularly healthy, you can still eat it but moderately. Make sure that as you grow older, the junk or unhealthy food does not overpower the good food. Live in your own food utopia. Going a diet is like joining a cult. You do whatever the diet requirements are, you live and bask in the glory of the diet and will surrender your own instincts and continue the diet regardless of the consequences. If the path that you have chosen is to continue to go on a diet then, you have officially been brainwashed and there is no one who can help you at this point but yourself.
4. Dieting makes everything about food. Everything
Yes. Dieting does make everything about food. When you go on a diet, all that you’re constantly thinking about is food. When you start to attend family dinners, restaurants with lunch or even your sister’s wedding, all you’re thinking about is whether you can eat the food there or not, how many cards does the food here have, will you be able to get through this energy-draining tasks with the limited food you eat and much much more. Is it really necessary to have all these complicated thoughts when the diet is not even helping you for the better? It is important to live in the moment and care about important things in your life. Food should not be something you absolutely love, hate or think about all the time. Food should not be the best, worst or most importantly, the most important thing. Food should not be the subject of your sentence every time you step out to a place where you need to eat. Make your life about people, pets and yourself, and not about what food you have to eat.
5. The Diet controls you- break this and be better and stronger
As mentioned before, when we say going on a diet is like joining a serious cult, we were actually being very serious. When you are on a diet, you always and constantly have to stick to the plan without deviating from it for the rest of your life. Break one rule, cheat for one day and it will effect your body more than ever. There are cases of girls who have not gone to parties or dates or even family gatherings as they were afraid of cheating on their diet cycle and if they did so, they would not look good. In simpler terms, do not let a scale dictate your life, your relationships, your career and your ambitions. Diets do not control you. You do not have to be on a diet. Your body is beautiful the way it is.
If you are however, still keen on losing weight, then exercise and eat healthy and right not diet. Do not feel like you are unworthy because of your weight. Do not waste years on trying to achieve something with diets when they will not help you at all. Switch to better alternatives. Live healthier and happier.
By Meena Atmakuri
