The Atkins Diet, the South Beach Diet, the Cookie Diet, the Zone Diet; and more recently, the Paleo Diet; these are just a mere sample of the endless amounts of popular diets on the market today. The diet business is booming; an industry easily making billions of dollars each year. Women and men alike adhere to strict and even health-harming regimens in order to shred unwanted pounds. The supposed guarantees that these products and plans offer are grabbing the attention of millions of people every year. The NPD Group, an organization who provides market information and advisory services; estimated that in 2012, 20% of people claimed to be on a diet during any given week.
With the amount of people dieting along with the infinite amount of products and services to choose from, one would think that every diet surely leads to success. Unfortunately, the opposite may actually lie true. Splenda, a sugar substitute company, recently reported that one-third of women actually gain weight while dieting. While the average weight gain was reported to be only four pounds, this is quite shocking considering this outcome is the exact opposite of what these women were hoping to achieve.
The reasoning behind these results could lie with the fact that the average woman who is dieting will completely eliminate weight causing culprits out of their diet such as soda pop, sweets and snacks. This has proven to be harmful as explained by Lauren Manusakis; registered dietician, “What ends up happening is they end up eating everything they missed out on on these diets and so they don’t just gain the weight back, they gain the weight plus some.”
It seems safe to assume that treating yourself to a high-calorie snack may be more beneficial than cutting it out of your diet completely. Manusakis went on to explain that if you are craving one of these foods, it is acceptable to consume it as long as your meals throughout the day compensates for it. In other words, if you plan on having a dessert with your meal, try to substitute a lower-calorie food with it.
Additionally, Manusakis noted that taking your time can also be highly beneficial in regards to losing weight. Your body will take 20 minutes for your stomach to relay to your brain that you are full. Taking the time to enjoy your meal, while drinking plenty of water gives your body a chance to catch up and realize when it’s had enough. Keeping up with this strategy can eliminate the opportunity for the individual to over eat and to add unnecessary calories into your body.
Although it may be discouraging for some dieters to hear about the recent findings relating to the correlation between dieting and weight gain, there is a silver lining in the logic that eliminating one’s favorite foods now is proving to be unnecessary.
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