The minds of millions of people around the world are occupied with the 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 circle of the "sofa-work-refrigerator" and get back into shape?
Where does excess weight come from?
The incidence of obesity in a civilized society is becoming more and more common, despite the absence of changes in genes, that is, heredity. A modern person no longer needs to hunt a mammoth to get food for himself and his family. After all, just dial a phone number and the pizza delivery guy will be knocking on the door in minutes. Electronics and other new technologies have made life much easier for today's Homo sapiens. Many 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 consumed.
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 overweight and unintentionally causes 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, hypodynamy.
- Chronic fatigue, stress.
- Lack of sleep. Few people know that lack of sleep leads to overeating and this is a direct path to obesity.
- Inheritance.
- Endocrine diseases - hypothyroidism, etc.
- Psychological disorder of eating behavior.
- Taking certain medications, such as hormonal contraceptives.
Obesity is becoming a real problem and it is not about an aesthetic aspect. It is one of the most common causes of death in the world today. Doctor of medicine and philosophy Saori Sakaue, along with his mentor, Professor Yukinori Okada, conducted a study and found that blood pressure and obesity directly affect life expectancy. The findings were presented at the American Society for Human Genetics 2019 Annual Meeting in Houston, Texas.
Why diets don't work
Many of those who are losing weight, who have tried a variety of nutritional systems, cannot understand why even the most effective diet does not work? In fact, 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 lifestyle, the lost returns again, often carrying extra pounds with them. A person falls into a vicious circle, experiences himself and his health, but this only worsens the existing state of affairs.
Here are the most common causes of these problems:
- reduction of calorie content to critical levels. Normally a person, depending on sex, needs 2500-3500 kcal per day. A decrease in daily calorie intake to 1500 kcal or less leads to a significant lack of nutrients. The body cannot exist for long in such a regime, which inevitably leads to breakdowns and a return to normality;
- total exclusion of any product. Some diets prescribe the refusal of fatty foods or carbohydrates. But to maintain a normal life, the body needs both proteins and fats and carbohydrates. Rejection of anything is fraught with a number of unpleasant consequences. For example, a ketogenic diet can lead to ketoacidosis, a serious condition associated with intoxication and dehydration. Yes, such a diet is practiced for some diseases, but this process is strictly controlled by a doctor;
- failure to respect meal times. Proper nutrition involves meals divided into small portions and this is anything but accidental. In 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 a weight loss of 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: failure.
How to choose the most effective diet?
So it turns out that the most effective diet is the one that can be followed for life. This is exactly what nutritionists believe, promoting correct 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, it is better to seek the help of a competent specialist, because often a person does not understand what he is doing wrong. It happens that a single refusal of a late dinner is enough to get the process off the ground.
You shouldn't think that all overweight people eat fast food and convenience foods. They can eat the same food as everyone else but still gain weight. Someone like that takes stress, and someone simply suffers from a concomitant disease, for example, diabetes, but doesn't know yet. The approach here should be complex, and diet therapy is just one of them. According to American psychologist Tracy Mann, popular diets among people are generally useless as a means of combating excess weight. The first thing to do is to calculate the usual calorie 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 to the gym and, moreover, many are embarrassed by their bodies. They can try their hand at water sports: water aerobics, aquacycling.
Many people today practice 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 in such conditions will the weight begin to decrease. Pharmacological treatment and psychotherapy will complete what has been started, but this with the obligatory participation of a doctor. He can also decide on the surgical treatment of obesity.