Common Sense Advice to Help LGBTQ People Lose Weight and Avoid Fad Diets

For many LGBTQ people, losing weight today is both a necessity and an obsession, but too many are trying to do it with fad diets.

According to the Center for Disease Control, 62% of American adults fall in the overweight or obese category. This problem also affects 9 million children and teenagers. While an increasing number of adults and often teens turn to dieting as the solution to their issues with weight, research shows that often dieting does not work.

There’s a huge number of diets out there. Some are more scientifically sound than others. The problem with most of them is that the weight comes back when the diet is over. Therefore, the aim shouldn’t be to diet for a couple of months until “swimsuit season” is over, but rather to make lasting lifestyle changes, consciously improve your nutrition and lose the excess weight for life.

Making Smarter Choices about Dieting

Charlotte Markey, a nutrition professor at Rutgers University and author of “Smart People Don’t Diet”, analyzes existing fad diets and explains why they often don’t work. She suggests making one sustainable small change each week in order to eventually change your diet for life.

For example, if you drink soda, you could cut your soda consumption in half. Another healthy change would be adding less salt to your food. Changing one small thing each week will eventually lead you to achieving a calorie deficit, which is the number one weight loss principle. In other words, you need to burn more calories than you eat.

We do not recommend fad diets, since they will make you lose weight quickly but also gain it back just as quickly. However, many fad diets do have some truth in them, so you can try to identify the positive aspects of the most famous diets to incorporate them into your own diet.

Many fad diets recommend consuming only liquids or juices; while this is certainly not healthy, drinking more and adding fresh juices to your diet can give your body a real boost, while also maintaining correct hydration and fighting fluid retention, which also causes bloating and weight gain. Other diets recommend completely eliminating sugar and refined carbs; while this may not always be possible, choosing whole grain, non processed food more often will help you lose weight.

Losing Weight Without Giving Up Your Favorite Foods

Be honest with yourself: do you really see yourself giving up pizza, desserts, hamburgers or sugar for ever? Probably not. Any diet which aims to eliminate your favorite foods completely for life is destined to fail. Research shows that if you feel like you’re allowed to eat anything you want, you will actually be less likely to overeat. If, on the other hand, you feel like certain foods are completely off limits, chances are you will eventually crack and binge.

Allow yourself to eat whatever you want, in moderation. You will soon realize that if you allow yourself to have a small dessert after dinner, or perhaps a glass of wine at lunch, you will be more likely to make healthy food choices for the rest of the day and won’t risk heavily indulging on unhealthy foods.

Check out ten teas that may help you achieve your weight loss goals.

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