The minds of millions of people around the world are occupied by the very best diet that can help you lose weight and at the same time consolidate the result. Doctors are sounding the alarm, because the number of obese people is growing every day. How to get out of the vicious cycle of "work-sofa-refrigerator" and get in shape?
Where does excess weight come from?
The incidence of obesity in a civilized society is becoming more common, despite the absence of changes in the genes, that is, heredity. A modern person no longer needs to hunt a mammoth in order to get food for himself and his family. After all, it is enough to dial a phone number, and the pizza delivery man will knock on the door in a few minutes. Electronic and other new technologies have made life much easier for today's Homo sapiens. A lot of people are engaged in mental work, spending most of their time in a stationary position, and this disrupts the energy balance in the body, that is, the balance between absorbed energy - calories received and expended.
Improper nutrition only exacerbates this process, and given that eating habits are formed from childhood, it turns out that an adult person himself suffers from excess weight and involuntarily provokes its appearance in his children. Obesity affects entire families and this trend is only growing.
Here are the most common causes of excess weight:
- Sedentary lifestyle, hypodynamia.
- Chronic fatigue, stress.
- Lack of sleep. Few people know that lack of sleep leads to overeating, and this is a direct path to obesity.
- Heredity.
- Endocrine diseases - hypothyroidism, etc.
- Psychological eating disorder.
- Taking certain medicines, such as hormonal contraceptives.
Obesity is becoming a real problem and it's not about aesthetic appeal. It is one of the most common causes of death worldwide today. Doctor of Medicine and Philosophy Saori Sakaue, together with his mentor Professor Yukinori Okada, conducted a study and found out that blood pressure and obesity directly affect life expectancy. The results were presented at the 2019 American Society for Human Genetics annual meeting in Houston, Texas.
Why Diets Don't Work
Many of those who are losing weight, who have tried a variety of nutrition systems, cannot understand why even the most effective diet does not work? Indeed, it often happens that the chosen way to lose weight almost instantly helps a person to get rid of excess weight, but as soon as he returns to his usual way of life, the lost returns again, often taking extra pounds with him. A person falls into a vicious circle, he experiments on himself and his health, but this only worsens the existing state of affairs.
Here are the most common causes of these problems:
- reduction of caloric content to critical levels. Normally, a person, depending on gender, needs 2500-3500 kcal per day. Reducing the daily caloric intake to 1500 kcal or less leads to a significant lack of nutrients. The body cannot exist for a long time in such a regime, which inevitably leads to breakdowns and a return to normal;
- complete exclusion of any products. Some diets prescribe the rejection of fatty or carbohydrate foods. But to maintain a normal life, the body needs both proteins, and fats, and carbohydrates. Refusal of anything is fraught with a variety of unpleasant consequences. For example, a keto diet can lead to ketoacidosis, a severe condition associated with intoxication and dehydration. Yes, such a diet is practiced for certain diseases, but this process is strictly controlled by a doctor;
- non-compliance with the meal schedule. Proper nutrition provides for fractional meals in small portions and this is far from accidental. Under this condition, the digestive system works like a clock, it is not overloaded, and the body does not starve, which means that the risk of overeating is reduced to zero;
- moral torture. If the chosen diet promises weight loss by 10 or more kilograms, the person is ready for anything. He mentally tortures himself, completely refusing his favorite foods. And the result of this approach is one - a breakdown.
How to choose the most effective diet?
So it turns out that the most effective diet is the one that can be followed for a lifetime. This is exactly what nutritionists believe, promoting proper and rational nutrition. Therefore, it is necessary to change the very approach to the choice of products, the method of cooking, the time of its consumption, etc. If you cannot do it yourself, then it is better to seek help from a competent specialist, because often a person does not understand what he is doing wrong. It happens that just one refusal of a late dinner is enough to get the process off the ground.
You should not think that all overweight people eat the same fast food and convenience foods. They may eat the same food as everyone else but still gain weight. Someone thus seizes stress, and someone simply suffers from a concomitant disease, for example, diabetes, but does not yet know about it. The approach here should be complex and diet therapy is only one of them. According to the American psychologist Tracy Mann, diets that are popular among the people are generally useless as a means of combating excess weight. The very first thing to do is to calculate the usual caloric content of the diet and reduce it by 500 kcal below the adequate energy requirement.
In addition, it is recommended that you increase your physical activity without fail. What kind of sport it will be - it is up to the person to decide, because a positive result will be noticeable only under the condition of regular classes, which means that the load should be pleasant, bring pleasure. Not everyone likes to carry heavy weights in the gym, and besides, many are embarrassed by their bodies. They can try their hand at water sports - water aerobics, aquacycling.
A lot of people today are engaged in Nordic walking, and this sport has practically no contraindications and is suitable for both the elderly and obese people who need to protect their joints. Only under such conditions will the weight begin to fall. Drug treatment and psychotherapy will complement what has been started, but this is with the obligatory participation of a doctor. He can also decide on the surgical treatment of obesity.