Dear Tomek, I am glad that you have the thought of having to throw off unnecessary ballast. The New Year is a great time to make resolutions, and it’s good that you finally want to take care of yourself.
How long should the diet last?
It depends on what we mean by “diet”. You should definitely lose weight slowly. The slower you lose weight, the more confident that the kilograms will not come back after completing the diet. Weight loss should not exceed 0,5-1 kg per week.
With this approach, losing 32 kg can take up to about a year at a healthy and safe pace for you. To this you can add additional physical activity. It doesn’t have to be exhausting to start with. Movement must be adapted to your abilities. In addition, taking too much “pressure” one day may discourage physical activity the next day. Movement will be with you forever, so it is a good idea to like it, and not to discourage it immediately.
Why so long and slow?
The prospect of a weight loss year is not encouraging. However, on the other hand, gaining weight was also a process, not a single episode, after which you suddenly started weighing 32 kg more.
Losing weight at a slow pace will not come as a shock to your body, it also has to get used to the new situation. Besides, with this amount of excess baggage, the question arises, what about the skin, will it get in?
The skin is so flexible that after a slow slimming, combined with additional physical activity, it should not become excess. In the case of quick weight loss, e.g. 10 or more kilos lost in a month, the problem with excess skin is sure. Hence, I encourage you to approach losing kilograms wisely and very slowly. Maybe it’s a little less motivating, but it works for a long-term effect.
After the diet, go back to the diet
When you achieve the desired effect after a year, the diet does not really end. This is when the process of stabilization and exiting a diet with a reduced volume of food begins. Then the next stage of nutrition begins, i.e. skillfully increasing the portions of meals and learning about the portions that you should eat for the next 10 years to maintain the weight loss effect.
The time of weight loss and then stabilization is the period in which you develop new eating habits. You learn to eat properly, choose foods, decide about the quality of your meals, you start to convince yourself to eat breakfast every day and to regularly supply your body with food, and to drink more water. If during this time you understand that this is a new way of eating and that you have to eat for the rest of your life, then you will also realize that in a sense you will stay on a diet for the rest of your life.
Returning to old habits, junk food, skipping meals, avoiding breakfast will be tantamount to returning to the previous weight with an excess. So let’s try to get enough for yourself while learning healthy habits to like a new way of eating. When you like him, you won’t notice that healthy eating and diet have entered your blood so much that new habits are just your new lifestyle. Then the question of how long to stick to the diet will not come to mind. Good luck on this path and perseverance!
Diet with the support of a dietitian and psychologist: Give it a try
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