Contrary to what we hear here or there, the French are in no way tired of diets. Encouraged by the quest for better health, driven by the desire to be better in their bodies, they want to see the kilos they consider to be excess melt away quickly. Should a special diet be used?
Today we bathe in this no man’s land ofs diets where nothing is believed, nothing is followed, nothing is audible. The continued presence of commercials not helping the confidence that the population may have in nutrition, the real one. Let’s try to make sense of it all.
No special diet but an adapted diet
When I hear patients, friends or relatives discussing healthof dietoverweight or obesity, I have to admit that losing weight remains a very widespread quest.
A permanent wish which, however, is accompanied by a new requirement : aware of having strayed into diets that are not always orthodox or not necessarily effective over time, many people wishing to start (or resume) weight loss want it to be measured, moderate, healthy, in a word ” balance “.
No trash, no special or eccentric diet, no mono-diet, no nutritional extravagance: the reign of common sense is reborn.
One observation is obvious today: overweight is one of the major public health problems in our developed societies. And no need to hide the face: it is the increase in calorie consumption that causes this overweight.
In the space of thirty years, in the United States, daily food consumption has gone from 2,000 to 2,600 calories. During the same period, experts observed 40% increase in the number of people with overweight.
There is no recipe, method, special diet, drug or magic drink capable of losing ten pounds in ten days ad vitam aeternam without risk to health. Alone, I insist, a balanced nutritional practicea cleverly studied and balanced diet, scientifically developed menus supported by a balanced global vision, give reliable results.
Too many fears and constraints
Understanding how and why we lose weight makes it possible to avoid complaining about the slowness of the weight loss, or even about the reasons for a resumption of these, normal phenomena in any diet (yoyo effect).
Behind any request for weight loss therefore hides, in most cases, a personal, intimate expectation, which it is important to detect, bring to light, then satisfy. This is what happens when someone comes to me for moderate weight loss: their desire to lose weight goes far beyond the number on the scale.
Understanding how and why one loses weight makes it possible to avoid complaining about the slowness of the melting of the kilos, or even about the reasons for a resumption of these, normal phenomena in any diet.
The fearslike the constraintswhen you want to start and win the battle against superfluous surpluses, you have to eliminate !
Successful dieting involves feeling comfortable with it, hence the regular failures of a special, too special diet that is hard to follow. In other words, the more you change the way you eat, the more you change your nutritional habits and his way of life under the pretext of starting a weight loss treatment, less chance of success.
Too much stress kills motivation. Experience has shown me that the success of a diet goes through the recommendation of simple techniques, corresponding to our reflexes or our food functioning modes. In short, in line with our way of eating.
However, in 2015, who still eats like thirty years ago? Because our eating habits have been seriously shaken up, diets need to adapt. Proposing weight-loss methods that are incapable of taking into account these changes in habits and mentalities is as ineffective as it is ineffective and frustrating.
But the problem with all the balanced diets proposed so far was to impose a daily pensum: the extremely precise calibration food !
This calculation, today the public rejects it massively. Because he saw it as servitude, slavery even, breaking all links with food pleasure.
Do your shopping in a reasoned way, observe your food very closely, learn to cook, spend time there, be patient, weigh and calculate the smallest calorie… Faced with these choreshow many of those who want to lose weight are simply tempted to… delete a meal !
Moreover, the ideal being that the media or the authorities dream of developing does not correspond in any way to the average individual who likes very fatty taramasalata, kebabs, wine, invigorating dishes, charcuterie, and so on. The gap is huge between the composite portrait of this pure human being and the reality of your expectations.
Doctor, why am I not losing weight anymore?
“Doctor, before meeting you, I tried everything. We started a new diet together months ago and it worked, but now, for weeks, I’ve been treading water. What’s happening to me? Why am I not losing weight?”
We see it: the weight depends on 80% of elements impossible to change, but 20% of that fat that we’re trying to get rid of. This explains its multiple possibilities of modification or stagnation.
It is enough to eat more salt, to be constipated, to undergo temperature variations, to perspire (which will decrease or increase the water which circulates in the body) to randomly transform the 80% that we measure on the balance, thus preventing us from controlling our weight loss, which is carried out only on fat.
The results of a slimming method are therefore better at the beginning than in the middle or towards the endbecause, gradually, we spend less and less energy over the loss of pounds. A phenomenon that is all the more difficult to manage because the more the diet advances, the more our weariness increases and our motivation decreases.
We must not forget the need to return as gently as possible to a normal diet. It is, in a diet, and even more in a special diet that would change your habits too much, which makes stabilization difficult, if at all.
The longer and more difficult the restriction, the greater the frustrationwhich will end up decompensating in such a way messy.
So how do we keep the same weight for life when we eat different foods disorderly, move irregularly, take medications, age?
A diet is not a long calm river
In the case of a person prone to overweight, the feelings shift according to diets, and the individuals most in need of losing weight are precisely those who most quickly lose this automatic balance. One of the first mistakes made when worrying about losing weight is actually to losing the ability to assess what you eat.
We have a lot made patients feel guilty by blaming them for not following their diet if they didn’t achieve weight loss. This accusatory attitude amazes me. Because going back to your previous eating habits is an almost natural movement when you follow a special (or even classic) diet.
It’s normal, human, to stumble once in a while while dieting; so do not worry about it above all: the only thing that matters is to always keep your goal in mindto convince oneself of one’s success, to be patient, to persevere.
If you decide to lose weight, you will experience phases of doubt, rage perhaps, disillusionment, but know that they are normal as it is difficult to question received ideas and eating habits rooted in families. for generations. Be aware, on the contrary, that these periods should not never lead you to give up.
A diet, in itself, is not a cakewalkeven if I try to keep many areas of pleasure in my method.
But when you reach your original objectivewhen you see in the eyes of your parents, your loved ones, your friends how much the image they have of you has changed, when they tell you in person, when you admire yourself in a mirror the new silhouette that will be yours, imagine the happiness you will experience !
