Contents
Why is it difficult to stick to a diet?
The perfect application of a diet is difficult, because a diet very often involves a significant change in the way of eating. When losing weight, we usually try to change many of our previous habits at once. The introduced dietary restrictions are therefore very burdensome. Few people can persist in them for a long time. Diet is not our only burden. We have a lot of them in other areas of life as well. When we add extra burdens to ourselves, it’s no wonder that after some time we become overloaded with them and lead to deviations or even overeating. Moreover, research by Speer and Speer (1998) shows that as many as 24-40% of people suffer from binge eating when they start losing weight. It’s a very large group.
Persistent also happens
However, it should not be forgotten that people who strictly adhere to diets also happen. They can survive the entire period of weight loss without snacking or even introducing minor modifications to the menu. Unfortunately, research conducted by Baumeister (2000) shows that in such people the mechanisms responsible for controlling eating are very often impaired, and this promotes excessive eating after the end of weight loss. This is because during the period of using the diet, they ignore the signals coming from the body related to, for example, hunger. This makes them lose their ability to read them over time, and it becomes very difficult to regulate their food.
The approach to diet and its adherence
Many studies show that an improper, i.e. too restrictive, approach to diet results not only in the impairment of mechanisms responsible for controlling the way of eating, but also in lowering the mood and the desire to suppress thinking about food, which unfortunately has the paradoxical effect of increased consumption. So the more we care about strict adherence to the diet, the more difficult it is to follow it. And it does not matter if the diet is healthy and properly balanced. Even this will not always protect us from the problems of persevering on it.
Advantages of introducing deviations from the diet
Although the word “advantages” may sound controversial, the advantages associated with the reluctance to restrict dietary use do exist. Giving yourself permission for exceptions or modifications to the diet plan from time to time makes dieting more enjoyable and easier, so we can stick to the diet longer. As a result, over time, the diet can become a new way of nutrition. So we achieve what is most important in healthy weight loss, i.e. a permanent change in eating habits.
This is confirmed by the research carried out by Gauntlett-Gilbert and Grace (2007). These studies showed that permanent effects of weight loss are the domain of people who do not follow restrictive diets, and introduce easy-to-accept changes in their lifestyle and eating. A very restrictive approach to the diet associated with measuring every product to the gram, not introducing modifications when the diet is extremely difficult, therefore giving up parties or meetings while eating is wrong.
While strict adherence to the diet gives better results in the short term, a flexible approach to the diet is more effective in the long term.
What should the perfect weight loss look like?
The ideal diet is one where the changes are meaningful but easy to implement. First of all, such a diet should consist of dishes that we like. It should also make it possible to introduce modifications, e.g. by replacing one meal with another, equally healthy and dietary. Although it would seem that by introducing changes in the diet, there may be a shortage of some ingredients or a slight excess of others, in fact these deviations are not large enough to adversely affect the weight loss process. Moreover, such a procedure makes it easier to stick to the diet, and it is the long-term use of the diet that is the only way to achieve lasting and satisfactory results.
So it is worth remembering about it and when introducing a diet, give up thinking that there are prohibited products, that you cannot introduce even slight modifications or sometimes let go a little. Of course, gentle letting go is not about overeating. The point is simply that nothing will happen if we happen to eat a piece of chocolate or occasionally eat a piece of pizza. You can even arrange the so-called weekly cheat meal, that is, changing one dietary meal for another, freely chosen one. Then it will be easier for you to stick to your diet.
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