The reason most common weight loss techniques, like calorie-cutting crash diets, don’t work is because they over-simplify the problem.
It goes something like this:
- The Problem: extra weight
- The Cause: too many calories in your diet
- The Solution: cut calories
This straight-line, cause and effect approach makes it irresistible to everyone involved. First, the people and companies who profit from the $7 billion dollar weight-loss industry love it because it makes the solution so easy to sell. And those of us who want to lose weight, desperate to make a difference in our lives, want to believe that we can finally make it happen.
But losing weight healthily, for the long-term, is anything but a simple, straight-line proposition.
Why a Straight-Line Approach Doesn’t Work for Long-Term Weight Loss
If you simply cut calories, your body fights back because you are threatening its homeostasis – it senses that everything is fine.
The stress that cutting calories causes can lead to physical and mental issues, including inflammation, digestive issues, lack of energy, anxiety and depression. Any or all of those symptoms can, in turn, make it more difficult to lose weight, or even remain healthy.
How the Domino Effect of Good Nutrition Works
An underlying reason why straight-line approaches don’t work is that they have the wrong goal. When you take a different approach, one where the goal is better health, you start to see why straight-line approaches can’t work.
But how do you make “better health” happen? It starts with good nutrition.
But, remember, it’s not a straight-line approach. Good nutrition doesn’t lead directly to weight loss. Instead, it begins a chain reaction in your body, a domino effect of healthy transformations that, together, make it easier to healthily lose weight.
Here’s a general idea of how it works.
- You begin to take steps toward a healthier, nutritionally balanced diet. This can be simply eating more fruits and vegetables.
- Any healthier food choice you make, even eating an apple, takes the place of an unhealthy food choice. You slowly start to reduce your intake of processed foods and the excess sugar, salt and unhealthy fats they carry, as you increase your intake of healthier foods.
- Starting with your gut health, your overall health improves. In your gut, the added nutrition promotes the growth of healthy bacteria, which takes the place of unhealthy bacteria. Added fibre in your diet also slows the conversion of food energy into excess calories, thereby slowing the growth of fat cells.
- The healthy bacteria creates an environment that improves your overall well being in a number of ways, including a healthier digestive system (fewer stomach issues!); less inflammation; lower blood sugar levels; and a stronger immune system
- You feel better. With fewer “aches and pains” and your body not fighting against you, you feel more energy, which can lead to added activity.
- Suddenly, just by taking that first step towards good nutrition in your diet, you have given your body everything it needs for better health, and to support healthy weight loss.
If you need help to make that first domino of good nutrition fall and start a chain reaction that leads to healthy weight loss, visit your closest Herbal One location and talk to one of our nutrition consultants. They are ready to make it all happen for you.
To learn more about good nutrition, check out our recent article “Top 3 Trending Nutrition Myths”.