Healthy Lifestyle vs. Diets

The Question: Can you do your “diet” for years?

Most people associate diets as a short-term phenomenon.  They believe that as soon as they achieve the goal weight loss, they can go back to eating their normal diet.  Of course, they inevitably gain all the weight back.  When on a diet, a person will feel sensations of depression and deprivation.  These are emotions they cannot wait to rid of and so their thoughts center around the day when their diet finishes.  A University of California study found that 90 percent of dieters who follow a prescribed diet eventually regain the weight they have lost.  The 10 percent who were successful in keeping the weight off, 73 percent of them kept the weight off by just making healthy eating and lifestyle choices.  So when you are deciding on a particular eating plan, ask yourself if you can realistically follow the eating plan for years.  If not, stay away from it because as soon as you stop the plan, you will regain the weight.  If a plan imposes strict limits or requires only a few types of foods, a red warning light should go off.

The bottom line is not new but it bears repeating:  The only way to take weight off and keep it off is to exercise regularly and eat nutritiously.  It makes sense to realize that if you want to weigh 10 pounds less, ten years from now, it is what you do over the next ten years, not the next 6 weeks!  Short-term restrictive diets set people up for failure.  A healthy nutrition plan that you believe you can realistically follow for the rest of your life is the only nutrition plan that will work!

Your Key to Success in the Gym? Progressive Resistance!

The key to improving in the gym is to utilize progressive resistance. Whether your goal is increasing strength, increasing muscle mass, decreasing body fat or any other goal. Your body adapts when it is challenged by something it isn’t used to. Once your body gets used to this stimulus (weight, amount of exercise, type of exercise, etc…) it will stop changing. What does this mean to you?

The importance of this to you is that if you continue to do the same workout, same weight or same exercises you will stay……….the same. Challenge yourself and you WILL improve. Need help? Contact us today!

Start Your Year with An Assessment

If you have not taken advantage of a free assessment with Travelers Health and Wellness what are you waiting for? At the very least you will get a professional “snapshot” of where your body and health is at the beginning of the year. You don’t know how to get to your health destination if you don’t first find out where you start. Give us a call today and feel free to invite a friend.