As obesity continues to rise, many people who want to lose excess weight are looking for easy and fast ways to do so. As a result, an entire industry devoted to various diet fads and gimmicks has sprung up. But as the American Medical Association points out, no magic diet gimmick has proven effective. Losing weight is an individual journey, and the pathway is narrow: Reducing calories and increasing exercise is the only “gimmick” that works.
Reducing Calories
The body takes food you eat and converts it into energy that can be stored in the form of fat. When you have more surplus energy (fat) than you need for your daily activities, the fat supplies just keep building up until you gain weight. No gimmicks are involved in reducing the fat storage: By cutting the number of calories you consume, you can reduce excess weight.
Counting Calories
The average American adult needs 1,000 to 1,200 calories a day to function normally. Counting calories so you don’t go over budget is the first part of a two-part system to losing weight without fruitless gimmicks. Guides and nutrition labels can provide data on the caloric values of foods. There’s no trick involved: Simply use calorie counters to find out what foods “cost” in terms of calories. Stop eating when you reach your calorie limit for the day.
Increasing Calorie Burning
Everything you do burns calories. Sitting at a computer, for example, burns about 50 calories per hour, while taking a leisurely spin on a bike burns as much as 345 calories per hour. The second no-gimmick key to losing weight is simply to increase your rate of caloric burn-off by engaging in more physically demanding exercise. When your burn-off rate exceeds the calories you eat, your body starts burning old fat in storage—and you lose weight.
Changing Eating Patterns
Getting the weight off entails a fundamental change in your food lifestyle. You must change not only what you eat, but also when and why you eat so you can eliminate unhealthy habits such as binge eating and snacking. This may involve changing so many habits that you create a sharply different lifestyle.
Changing Activity Patterns
Sitting and watching hours of television with your family must end, since you cannot lose weight by merely sitting. You must move—and movement changes lifestyle. Moving more may involve altering your daily schedule, your modes of transportation, your use of time. Much of your life will be affected, and usually for the better.
Avoiding Diet Gimmicks
Despite all kinds of lore, advertising and media hype to the contrary, there is no herb, pill, tea, or food that is clinically proven and certified by objective scientists to be effective in safe and healthy weight loss. In most cases, these “magic” diet products will be a waste of money—and could be harmful to your health.
Avoiding Exercise Gimmicks
Like food and pill gimmicks, trendy exercise equipment is often only minimally effective in tests conducted by objective consumer science groups. A simple daily exercise such walking—which is free, takes up no space in your home and can be done by nearly everyone at any age—is a proven path to weight loss when matched with calorie-counting.
References
- “Dieting For Dummies”; Jane Kirby R.D.; Dec. 19, 2003
- “Fitness For Dummies”; Suzanne Schlosberg; April 1, 2005
- “The Complete Idiot's Guide to Weight Loss;” Lucy Beale; 2002
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