Why Diets Fail?

A Healthier You

Why Diets Fail

by Dr. Glenn Barney

In today's fast-paced society, we often lose track of good habits. There's no question the biggest casualty stemming from our on-the-run lifestyles is our daily food intake, which is often riddled with bad choices, fast food or poorly conceived diet programs. Each year, millions of people start programs to lose weight, only to come up against a sea of emotions that include confusion, frustration and disappointment.

Time and again, dieters surrender to the forces of high-caloric foods that fill our supermarket shelves when they fail to achieve their weight-loss goals, or stand idly on the bathroom scale watching the pounds they lost last month scurry back home this month. Weight-loss diets can work, but first you need to understand why they don't work.

There are three reasons why diets fail. The first, I call The Quick-Fix Diet, where dieters often drastically restrict their calories or food choices for a while, but return to their old habits once they reach their weight-loss goal. The second problem - The Off-Balance Approach - are fad dieters who focus on specific types of foods or nutrients, and disregard the importance of everything else, which leads to unbalanced nutrition.

The third reason diets fail is The High-Glycemic Trap. High-glycemic foods, such as white bread and pasta, have carbohydrates that rapidly increase the body's sugar levels. Eating these foods can sabotage even the best diet plans because the resulting spike and subsequent drop in blood sugar leads to a quick return of hunger pangs.

Once you understand the pitfalls to dieting, finding solutions that work for you on a continuous basis is simple and doable. Here are some general diet guidelines:

1. Eat something nutritious every three hours of your day. The portion size should be no larger than your fist. Also, drink at least half your weight in ounces per day of water (and avoid the likes of coffee, tea or soda). If you are sweating, you should double your water intake.

2. Eat a balanced regimen of carbohydrates, proteins and fats. If you eat too many of any of these, your body will ride a glycemic rollercoaster, and your day will be filled with high- and low-energy points. Proteins give you energy, carbohydrates sustain your activity, and fats provide lubrication to your joints and help breakdown the other two.

3. Focus on making the majority of your daily foods low-glycemic. Those include vegetables, nuts, whole-grain breads and lean meats. Remember, high-glycemic foods raise your blood sugar more than table sugar.

Of course, exercise is equally as important to dieting as the foods you consume. Most people utilize cardio-type activity by going on walks or riding bikes to work the heart and burn calories. The key is you must double your resting heart rate consistently for at least 15-minutes to reach a point where your body burns calories.

Strength training is another option to use while dieting. Fat cells. Located between the skin and muscle layers, become excited by sugars or high-glycemic foods, making you appear more "round." But if you make the muscles larger in size, they compress the fat cell down to its original state of being flat, not fat.

Start your personal diet program by eating smart daily and exercising with cardio and strengthening regimes at least three times a week. Begin slowly and challenge yourself as you adjust to your new lifestyle - and get back on track with good habits.

Dr. Glenn Barney has been practicing chiropractic medicine in the Auburn area for 19 years. The ChiroSport Wellness Center offers proactive health programs and treatment alternatives for anyone with bodily pains from migraines, back spasms and injuries to digestive disorders and allergies. He can be reached at gbarney@chirosport.net.