As the avid Pinterest pinner I am, lately I have seen many post on their health and fitness pages about diets boasting that it will make you lose 10 pounds in 7 days. Wow! It sounds pretty awesome just looking at it on the surface, but in reality, its just a recipe for another dieting fail. In school I learned that an average, healthy, weight-loss is about .5lb to 2 lbs a week. Eating an excess of 3500 calories a week, or about 500 extra calories a day, based on the average 2000 calorie a day diet, can make someone gain a pound a week. Therefore, by cutting between 250-500 calories a day, you'll see about a pound of weight loss a week. Losing 10 pounds in 7 days sounds like a dream! But in reality, most of the weight you'll be losing is water weight, which is easily gained right back. Rapidly weight-loss is the easiest way to guarantee you will gain it back as soon as you've finished with the diet. Not to mention your energy level will be lower, making you feel tired more often.
This 10 pound, 7 day diet tells people that they should be consuming about 1000 calories a day. My peers and I have learned that the minimum amount of calories the body needs a day to do all of its processes and function is 1200 calories. Without these calories, your body will not function as it normally would, making you feel tired, unmotivated, hungry and have some digestive issues.
Another thing about this diet is that you pretty much avoid fat and carbohydrates. These are 2 of the 3 major nutrient sources, the third being protein. Carbohydrates provide quick energy, and can be stored in the muscles for later use. And fat is used to make hormones, be stored as energy, and help provide protection to the internal organs. Significantly cutting these out of the diet or drastically reducing the intake of them will have negative outcomes. A diet like this is proven to be unsuccessful and weight rarely stays off. Your best bet is to cut down on highly processed foods, do a mix of cardio and strength training exercises between 3-5 times a week for about 30-45 minutes , and try to reduce caloric intake by about 250-500 calories a day, nothing more than that.
Lastly, do not believe that juice detoxes are the best thing out there for you. Our bodies have a special organ that already filters out toxins that we may ingest and helps to purify our bodies, its the liver. Its whole function is to make sure that there are no toxins within us. We do not need some super expensive juices or shakes to do that for us when our body does it for free! And by blending up fruits and vegetables, all you're getting to eat while doing the detox is carbohydrates, because fruits and vegetables are made of starch, glucose, and fructose, which are all carbohydrates. There is little protein in these "wonder shakes", therefore you feel hunger much faster than when consuming protein. Protein promotes satiety, which means it helps you feel fuller longer. It fights off that hunger feeling.
So before you try a miracle diet or a detox, question the claims it makes. Ask yourself, does this make sense?
-E
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