WebMD publishes so many good diet and healthy food tips that you will find it well worth your time to subscribe to their email list. This list is common sense for anyone that has tried very many diets, but like so many things, sometimes we just need to be reminded! When you want to lose weight and nothing seems to work, the advertisements for many of these fad diets are so appealing that it’s hard to resist. Except for the lucky few, losing weight takes TIME. More than 2 pounds of weight loss per week will usually pop right back on the minute you start eating normally again.
Here is the list of the 5 worst diets ever (from WebMD):
1. Diets that focus on only a few foods or food groups
2. “Detox” diets (like Master Cleanse, the Hallelujah Diet, and The Martha’s Vineyard Diet Detox).
3. Diets with ‘miracle’ foods or ingredients (like supplements, fructose water, bitter orange, green tea, apple cider vinegar).
4. Fasting and very low-calorie diets (like the “Skinny” vegan diet, Hollywood Diet, and Master Cleanse).
5. Diets that sound too good to be true (like The Weight Loss Cure ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About.)
So, where does that leave you if you want to lose weight? Well, if you do the math, with 3500 calories making up one pound:
Shave off 100 calories a day = 10 pounds of weight loss/year! Almost exactly! To lose 2 pounds per week, you need to burn 1000 more calories per day than your body needs. So if your normal intake is 2500/day, cut it back to 1500. Some good websites to calculate what your body needs and the calories in most foods are:
http://www.sparkpeople.com (one of my favorites!)
. What I hadn’t factored in was exactly how many calories I needed.