Just as doctor hopping is detrimental to our health, so is diet hopping. How often do we find ourselves switching between diet plans or even mixing them? Last Monday was Atkins – low carbs, high proteins, little fruits. Last Friday was following the Food Pyramid – High Carbs, low fats, lots and lots of fibre. By changing the way we eat before our body can adapt, we are actually causing our body to absorb everything by default. If by Friday our body has just managed to adapt such that it burns less carbs but more proteins and fats, imagine the amount of Carbs leftover at the end of the day (No prize for knowing where the excess carbs go). And we would feel very lethargic, because of the lack of engery due to the low amount of fats burnt.
Another danger is the “It is healthy, so I can eat more” fallacy. We all abstain from eating too much potato chips or ice- cream. When presented with a healthier alternative, we tend to loosen our control. DANGEROUS. No doubt apple chips and yogurt have been advertised as healthy food, eating them excessively is just as bad. Even health food is not spared. Eating too much muesli can be carbo-overload. Eating too much fish with its fats is still eating fats, never mind the omega-3.
Finally, people are just plain too lazy to read up on the diets that they are following. The papers only mentioned “Atkins is a diet which advocates high fats, low carbs” and some of us would do just that. We miss out on the details, like no fruits and A LOT of exercise. When dieticians advise people to eat a wide range of nutrition, they are assuming that people do not think a burger is healthy (Come on, it has 2 servings of carbs
Yep… As I was told, moderation is the key to weight control. AND KNOWLEDGE!!