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Why eating nutritional foods is better than dieting

HOUSTON – It seems to be an accepted fact of life – if you want to lose weight, you have to diet.

Instead of forcing yourself to adhere to a strict diet, work on eating healthier foods in moderate portions.

HOUSTON – It seems to be an accepted fact of life – if you want to lose weight, you have to diet.

There are endless fad diets that seem to pop up every year and then slowly die out as people forget about them.

You’ve likely heard of plenty of them. The Atkins diet convinced millions of people to avoid starches for years, and nowadays the Paleo diet is gaining popularity.

These diets may sound good on paper, and indeed, they may work well enough for a few months. Inevitably, though, things seem to go back to how they used to be. You gain all the weight back, and you’re back right where you started.

For many people, this is a sign of personal failure – they couldn’t keep the diet going, and it is their fault that they gained the weight back. However, this simply isn’t true.

The truth is that diets as people understand them just do not work in the long run. If you’re the type of person that flits between various diets but can never quite find one that works, you probably want to learn why diets don’t actually work. Eating nutritional foods is your best bet in the long run as opposed to sticking to a strict diet.

Here’s what you need to know:

What Really Happens When You Diet

You’ve probably been down the path before multiple times. You get all set to dive into a new diet that’s supposed to help you shed pounds like nothing before – and things go well at first.

Eventually, though, you find yourself gaining back the weight despite your best efforts.

This is simply the nature of dieting. When you diet, you’re tricking your body temporarily, and it will eventually catch up with you. There are certain psychological and physiological changes that happen when you diet that make it difficult to keep the weight off.

Firstly, your brain begins to react to food differently when you are on a diet, making it a bigger temptation to eat than it would normally be. This puts you at a disadvantage already.

Then, your hormone levels and metabolism change, making your body hang on to every calorie you receive. This means that you are essentially starving yourself when you diet, and your body will do anything it can to get you back to your original weight.

Diets just don’t work in the long run.

What You Can Do Instead

Instead of forcing yourself to adhere to a strict diet, work on eating healthier foods in moderate portions. It doesn’t need to be extreme, and cutting out particular types of food tends just to be a fad. Simply eat proportioned nutritional foods that give your body what it needs.

Some sweets here and there aren’t going to be the end of the world – and be sure to back up your nutritious diet with proper exercise if you really want to make a difference. This way, you can make a positive change in your life without driving yourself crazy over a diet.

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