Lifestyle Versus Diet

Those of us who have wanted to lead a healthy life or reduce weight know what a constant struggle it is to choose between dieting and making permanent lifestyle changes. Dieting itself is quite hard and while for some it may lead to a success story, others can get quite frustrated by it.

Diets – good or bad?

Diets are quite trendy these days and may promise to get you to your weight goals, but there are some bad diets that may cause weight loss but also lead to malnutrition. This is when people go overboard with diets and stop eating what they normally would. This makes the body deprived of the nutrition it needs and after the diet is over and the weight loss is achieved, one might eat a lot and the excess weight would return.

It has been proven that only 5% of dieters end up remaining the same weight they lost after dieting. Rest gain it back.

How to make lifestyle changes?

The other way around is making permanent lifestyle changes. That means what you eat, what schedule you maintain, how you cope with workload and stress, how much time you devote to exercising and much more. It is a much broader approach than dieting and does sometimes include dieting as well. Changing your lifestyle to be healthier means balancing all phases of life and works much better not for reducing weight but also for leading a healthier and happier life.

A diet is temporary but a lifestyle change is long-term.

Tips to help you choose:

1. Need to fit into a dress before a big function? Go for diet.
2. Tired of going to the gym, quitting, joining again and counting calories? Lifestyle change.
3. Need to shed weight fast but also remain lean for a longer time? Mixed approach. Make the diet part of your lifestyle change.