You want to be successful in weight loss. And to be successful
there are two things you absolutely must do. You have to
follow these two simple but extremely important points.
One, you have to follow a program that you can stick with,
and number two, you have to include foods that you really
like. Got that? A program you can stick with—and foods
that you like to eat.
Number one is so simple that you might say it is too obvious.
Of course a weight loss program will not work if you don’t
stick with it. But the reality is that a lot of the programs
that are popular today suffer from this one point.
Look at some of the most popular current diets: Atkins,
South Beach Diet, Ornish, Zone, Weight Watchers, and others.
You will see that one major problem is that most people
just can’t stick with the diet. They might start out
fine, but soon they fizzle out.
This has been studied a number of times, and it always
comes out the same. Take Atkins for instance. A study by
Consumer’s Union in June 2005 noted that those on
the Atkins program had good results initially but tended
to have more difficulty staying with the program than people
who were on other programs.
The New England Journal of Medicine came to the same conclusion.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that
people had good results with Atkins at first but at one
year the weight loss was minimal. (A randomized trial of
a low-carbohydrate diet for obesity. N Engl J Med. 2003
May 22;348(21):2082-90.) Most people just could not stick
with the program long-term.
The high-fat low-carbohydrate diets all have this in common—people
have a hard time staying on them for a long time. One of
the main reasons is that people just don’t feel well
after a while on these programs. Physically, they don’t
feel well.
I have found this to be true in my own research. Patients
are not able to stay with a high-fat low-carbohydrate diet
for the long run. And I have never seen a patient who got
lean, fit and healthy on the Atkins program.
Many of my patients will say that they have had good results
with Atkins. In fact, they will usually say that they have
lost weight on the Atkins program several times.
They lose weight easily at first. But then they go back
to their old habits and gain the weight back. They usually
gain back more weight than they lost. Then they try it again
after a year or so. They lose again, but not quite so well
the second time or the third time.
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