Dieting, Why Is it Hard for You?
In this article, I'm going to explain, in my opinion, and based on my experience on why it's hard for people to diet. But first, what is Dieting?
Dieting is the practice of eating food in a regulated and supervised fashion to decrease, maintain, or increase body weight, or to prevent and treat diseases, such as diabetes. A restricted diet is often used by those who are overweight or obese, sometimes in combination with physical exercise, to reduce body weight.Dieting is one of those things many people dread on because it's "hard" for them or it's not "fun." I give you that, it is hard because you're changing the way you eat and live. We live on food, and without food, we'd be dead. So, food is so important in everyone's lives but yet no one understands food. Food contains nutrients and within those nutrients, it's more complex. It has micro and macro nutrients which are the main block of what people should have a little knowledge of when it comes to gaining weight, losing weight or just overall trying to live healthy by balancing out nutrients. It's a bit complicated from here because growing up, at least where I lived, we didn't quite learn about nutrition, we just ate whatever we ate. I knew vegetables were a staple of "healthy foods" but I wasn't interested in them because I was never introduced to veggies until later on I found out why people do not consume them. It's just not that fun to consume them. They don't have that much of a flavor or taste good. That's why people resort to snacks and other unhealthy food which causes health problems. Thus is why people gain weight, etc is due to the lack of nutrition information or simply they do not care about their consumption or weight...
It's hard to say what is "causing the weight" because I'm not there to tell nor to see how your lifestyle is, but commonly, weight gain comes from excessively eating, eating poorly, or having a poor lifestyle such as stress, poor sleep, etc. Overall, it usually boils down to nutrition. People do not have to workout to burn the weight off necessarily, but it'll help.
For many, it's hard because it's simply not fun to consume healthy foods due to the lack of flavor. Although, you can make healthy food taste good, you just have to have good places that know how to make good food or you should find out how to make healthy foods taste better...
People fall off their diets because they fall into a trap, end up indulging in junk food and they call it quits afterward. It is FINE if you cheat on your diet for a day because it doesn't make that much of a difference or a difference at all. We can only consume so many calories within a single day. The rest is flushed after. To fix this problem, everyone must educate themselves about nutrition a bit to understand the basics and from there, you can change the way you eat and think about food differently.
Also, to help me to stay on my diet is to balance out my food intake. Balance is the key. Sometimes I don't always eat vegetables and chicken, sometimes I like indulging in pizza and cake but after those junk foods that I've consumed, I'll the calories and nutrients to use; my workout session will benefit from the food consumption. Anyways, balance is the key. If you are always eating junk, have a set day when you want to eat junk only. Think of it has a reward; by staying on a diet for [x] many days, you can reward yourself, giving yourself this satisfaction of not indulging in junk food that everyone loves.
Dieting is also hard because many people think that they only have to eat certain foods to 'stay on a diet or to diet.' This is false because they are so many food selections out there that there's no [#1 diet method] to help with dieting. It all comes down to moderation, selection and knowing your body. If you're eating like a pig, most likely you're going to be overweight and unhealthy.
When I first started dieting, I used an App called, "MyfitnessPal." It is a calorie/macro counting app - it helps people count their macro, micro and calorie count. It gives you all the information about that specific food or beverage. This is helpful when trying to understand foods, and their nutrients/nutrition. From here, you can make choices based on your life and it'll help with dieting and manipulation of your body (such as weight loss, muscle gain, etc). Once I understood the basics such as calories, micro, macronutrients and what are carbs, fats and proteins, I knew what I was consuming. What was causing the weight gain, what was causing weight loss. I knew how to manipulate my body fat and weight. It was also the start of the time when I started to eat more healthy, started to research about nutrition more, about the ingredients and which is beneficial, harmful, etc
If you think dieting is hard, it's not. It depends on your goal. If you're trying to become sick shredded and leaned out, now that is hard because you really have to narrow down your food selection. You have to be much more precise on food selection and intake. Now, if you want to diet normally, sustain a healthy body image, performance and mental/physical state, moderation and food selection is the key. There's no maic when it comes to dieting. Everyone's dieting method is a bit different because there's SO many options out there that is somewhat impossible tell anyone what is perfect for you and all of that. It ultimately comes down to preference and moderation. Other things tie in/along with dieting too - such as stress, sleep, and exercise.
If you are dieting hard but not seeing any results, your nutrition is still off. If you're noticing weight loss but loss of muscle gains or not gaining any muscle gains, it might not be your nutrition, it could be something else. Now, everything comes in together. If your sleep is off, how are you going to recover if you're exercising? When exercising you're breaking the muscles down, which need recovery and from sleeping, recovery happens. If you're stressing or constantly having a mental state of something, you're causing the body stress. When the body is under stress, many things happen which inhibits and causes a lot of problems. If you're wanting to optimize everything within your life you must examine everything you do and see what you can fix from there.
Dieting isn't hard, you shouldn't think of it as a chore, it should be a lifestyle habit. Because if we aren't constantly eating healthy or embracing healthy foods, we're causing damage to our bodies. Moderation is everything and if we excessively consume bad foods, we'll be like junk, feel like junk and be dead at an early state. Think of dieting as a habit of living healthy - if you want longevity, then dieting is the key. If you want to feel good, perform good, think good, think positive, feel amazing, look amazing, looked ripped, lean and muscular, dieting is the key.
Set a Standard for yourself. Exclude anything that harms you. For instance, milk is a negative thing for me. It upsets my stomach and completely ruins my appetite. I also cannot sleep if I drink milk beforehand. Another example is that if I eat food that has a lot of grease or foods that contain a lot of carbs and fats with little protein. I feel really sluggish, tired and exhausted or loss of energy and motivation. I try to avoid those foods on the daily. When I feel like eating cereal, then i'll treat myself but not every day. Here and there is okay. By setting a standard, you won't go overboard, you won't indulge, you'll be strict on yourself knowing that you're doing the right thing for you and for your body.
People! If you have any questions or comments, comment your thoughts down below in the comment section. Reach out to me via social media for more.