What is a diet?

diet meal for weight loss
  • Difficult and deliberate limitation of energy intake (calories consumed) with food. For example, this could be following a well-known diet or simply counting calories and setting strict limits.
  • Limit the variety of foods and eat the same:
    • low carb diets: protein diet, Atkins diet;
    • fatty diets;
    • juice diet.
  • Irregular food:
    • hourly diet;
    • diet 5: 2 (five days a week we eat normally and two days a week - we limit ourselves to food);
    • skip meals;
    • "Fasting days, " i. e. , refusing to eat on certain days.

Who follows the diet?

Diets are both popular and popular. It is estimated that about half of normal weight women tried to follow a diet. One study found that nearly 70% of 15-year-old girls follow a diet and 8% follow an extremely strict diet. Another study found that approximately 70% of women and 45% of those who follow a diet are overweight and do not need to follow any diets.

Before the diet there is dissatisfaction with your body and the desire to lose weight.

A study in the UK found that two-thirds of girls aged 14-15 and half of girls aged 12-13 want to lose a few pounds. Due to the associated stress, about a quarter of young girls missed at least one meal a day.

Diet risks

Diets increase the risk of eating disorders. Researchers have found that if teenage girls eat in moderation, the risk of eating disorders increases fivefold, and if a strict diet is followed, eighteen times.

Frequent, strict diets contribute to being overweight. 95% of those who follow a diet to lose weight in the next two years gain more than they lost on a diet. This is due to the fact that during the diet people severely limit the number of calories and variety of dishes, experience constant hunger. Perhaps those on a short-term diet may not pay attention to hunger, but long-term diets result in increased appetite and overeating. This in turn causes a sense of guilt and failure, which can increase dissatisfaction with yourself and your body. Some people live a similar cycle of diets all their lives - that is, diet takes up some of their time and energy every day.

In addition, diets have been found to slow down metabolism - slowing down the rate of burning calories.

Normal metabolic rate is restored some time after a person returns to a healthy and proper diet.

A strict diet affects both mental and physical health. Bad breath, fatigue, overeating, headache and cramps, constipation, sleep disturbances and possibly bone destruction may occur.

Diets can change the body’s natural response to food, needs, and appetite. A person stops feeling hungry and full, he can stop separating his emotional needs from hunger.

Why do we follow a diet?

Many people of normal weight consider themselves overweight and want to lose weight by following a diet. In addition, many overweight people want to get rid of extra pounds and believe that diet will help them do so.

It is known that about ⅓ of the world's population is overweight, but about twice as many people want to lose weight.

They follow a diet to be slimmer. There are many reasons for losing weight around the world, one of which is the equally widespread fear of gaining weight. It has been revealed that such fears may already be present in primary school students. For some reason, in our society, completeness is seen as something shameful and doomed.

Through advertising, the desire to follow a diet for people is supported by companies focused on everything related to diets (diets, books, foods and other goods). Because we work in a highly profitable industry, the diet industry is unnaturally optimistic about diets. In fact, it has been found that half of the people who follow a diet gain weight as a result - few of them are able to maintain the weight lost during the diet for five years.

The success of a strict diet depends on many physical and mental factors, and in the case of obesity, it is very ineffective for weight loss.