Sometimes it feels like we’re just banging our heads against the wall here at Herbal One.
From the moment we opened our doors, we’ve been all about managing your weight by eating healthy foods, based on Canada’s Food Guide and commonly available in the grocery store, combined with a program of top-quality herbal weight management supplements.
Here are just a few of the benefits of our program, versus other weight loss programs and diets.
1. You Don’t Go Hungry
By eating the foods you’re familiar with, in the right balance of proteins, carbohydrates and fats, you avoid the hunger pangs that make it difficult to follow most weight-loss diets and programs.
2. You Get Great Nutrition
Losing weight is not a simple mathematical equation. Your body is a complex organism focused on staying alive. Any threat to that, including the reduction of food energy you get when you cut calories, will trigger powerful responses in your body that can wreak havoc with your health and actually reverse your weight loss.
But the combination of healthy, wholesome foods and herbal supplements gives your body all the nutrition it needs to stay healthy and support your weight loss.
3. It’s Easier to Keep the Weight Off
When you use diets and programs that rob your body of energy and nutrients, something’s going to give eventually. And that’s why 95% of weight-loss dieters gain all their weight back within one to five years.
But when you eat healthily and lose weight healthily, it’s easier to keep the weight off over the long term.
So you can understand our frustration when, in the face of all the evidence that calorie-cutting diets don’t work, and how much time and effort we’ve spent to warn everyone about that, we still see people jumping head first into yet another new fad diet, looking for a quick fix for their weight problems.
The CICO Diet and Why It Doesn’t Work
First, the basic premise of the CICO (short for “Calories In, Calories Out”) diet is scientifically sound. You will lose weight if you burn more calories than you consume.
Gaining popularity on Reddit, a social news and trends site, the CICO diet uses that ‘scientifically proven’ point to legitimatize a diet that has a number of other things wrong with it.
It Reduces Weight Loss to a Mathematical Equation
Yes, the equation works, but the practice doesn’t. If you cut calories, without considering your health and nutrition, you risk suffering a number of health problems, including:
- Slower metabolism
- Lack of energy
- Hormone imbalances
- Gastrointestinal complications
- Skin problems
- Weaker immune system
- Sleep problems
It’s Unsustainable
Over time, as all the negative health implications of cutting calories and not eating healthily pile up and your metabolism slows down, continuing to lose weight becomes increasingly difficult until it is almost impossible without more damage to your health.
Reason for Hope
While we’re trying to battle yet another calorie-cutting diet and expose the health problems it can cause, we see some signs of hope. We first learned about the CICO diet in an online article titled: “A simple diet that has helped people shed pounds is going viral — but dietitians think it’s a bad idea”.
The good news is right there in the title. “Dieticians think it’s a bad idea”. At least this is not one of those “Lose 30 pounds in a Month with the Fabulous CICO Diet!” articles.
Among other great points and quotes by registered dietitians and nutritionists in the article, we found one from Malina Linkas Malkani, a registered dietician nutritionist with the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, who told the article writer that the quality of what you eat is key for long-term weight management and overall health and wellbeing.
“When people focus solely on a number of calories per day but eat only junk, they can end up suffering from a long list of issues,” Malkani said.
When you’re ready to healthily manage your weight, call or visit your nearby Herbal One Centre and talk to one of our qualified nutrition counsellors who will help you every step of the way.