Years back, my friend was on the Atkins diet. You know, the low-carb diet that causes the body's metabolism to burn stored body fat instead of glucose. Sounds great right? Easy enough, just eat everything except for carbs. And it worked! She lost 10-15 pounds!
The downside was when she stopped being on the Atkins diet, she ate all the bread, cookies, noodles, and rice she could eat, gaining all the weight back and then some. She may have gained 20+!
The worst part of it was that we were in high school too. It's kind of disturbing to think that we're influenced - at such a young age - so thoroughly by society's standards on how to be thin by eating less and dieting all the freaking time.
We should just enjoy food as well as eat healthy as much as possible. My friend, after the diet, even said she couldn't believe that she didn't eat carbs! Look how delicious carbs can be!
I understand everyone wants to be skinny and everyone complains about a part of their body they would want to lose weight from (stomach, neck, arms, thighs, etc.), but extreme dieting like Atkins may actually cause more weight gain. The reason is because when you're dieting, you consciously realize you're not allowed to eat certain foods, so then if you ever stop dieting, you'll splurge on it.
So do these so-called diets really help lose weight?
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Comments (14)
nah. Diets mainly just cause you to..yoyo I guess. Meh, I would never go on the Atkins diet. LOVE CARBS. LOL, heck, I even get bread cravings...
it is possible to cut calories and eat what you want. just eat less. its that simple. you dont need fad diets with all the "eat this not that" bullshit.
People are getting influenced to diet at younger and younger ages. My nutrition professor showed my class a newspaper article that discovered children as young as 5 years old were throwing up their food
so called diets do not truly work. all that works is changing your diet to healthy foods and lower calories + 5/6 days a week exercising. all the details of it depend on the person. but i lost 45 pounds and have kept it off for 2 years. also struggled with eating disorders, but not so terribly at the time of my weight loss. the reason everyone wants to be so damn skinny is because the media tells us that is whats sexy and everyone wants to feel loved. we just think we need to be thin for that. we do not. unfortunately , i dont see society changing for a long time so im rolling with the punches by being pretty thin and just focusing on health more than anything. and that is so hard to do when you have been a raging bulimic for a damn long time.
I tried not eating carbs.. But carbs are basically all the noodles, rice, bread :(
if you can keep that diet for as long as you live and maintain optimal health, do it. it's a lifestyle.
diets are disgusting. im VERY anti-diets because all they do is make you cut out food which you love, and when you fall off the bandwagon, you gain back the very weight you were trying to lose.
Totally agree with what you said. The best diet is to incorporate really healthy foods into your meal plan, eat less of what's bad, and go to the gym ftw!
During my freshman year, we took a class trip called "Team Trek" where we learned how to work as a team and leadership skills and such. Well this set of twins started atkins and so when we were gathered outside of the mess hall for breakfast one of the teachers/leaders said "Will the girls who are on Atkins please come inside?" Ya know, so they could get the foods they needed since they were on a limited diet. I still can't believe the leader was allowed to do that.
I'm Asian. I need rice to survive. xD
Moderation, moderation, moderation. And exercise. That's all I have to say about that.
@XxskinnyxxhippoxX@xanga - exactly
i think people just need to enjoy and stop comparing to the media's standards. unless it gets to the point that it may really hurt your health.
@daeshii@xanga - =) i agree