Keep the Weight Off with Improvements to Your Personalized Menus

The strong anti-fat bias in our country may be shifting. Although shaming people into losing weight will never work, getting them to understand that having a healthy body image will likely lead to better health outcomes. Your metabolic set point determines how your brain adjusts your energy expenditure to keep your body within a certain weight range. People who experience a negative bias over weight gained may also develop a weight loss stigma that puts them at an increased risk for developing obesity and remaining obese for the rest of their life.

Dieting is a proven approach that produces obvious weight loss benefits, but how you reduce caloric intake may not be as important as continuing calorie reduction during the maintenance phase by managing setbacks, such as:

• CRASH DIETING - We all have a diet but you don't have to be on a diet. Use the term diet to refer to your overall eating habits rather than a short-term plan for losing weight. To lose weight and keep it off, you need to improve your actual diet day in and day out on a long-term basis.
• STARVING YOURSELF - When you drastically restrict your dietary intake, you may consume less calories but your body will likely slow your metabolism. Learning how to listen to your body is an invaluable tool for losing weight.
• NOT ADOPTING HEALTHY HABITS - Crash dieting doesn't work as the more rapid weight loss slows your metabolism. Since it is difficult to burn fat quickly, a substantial amount of metabolically active muscle can be lost and you have your body working against itself.
• LOW METABOLIC RATE - Calorie restrictions can cause your metabolic rate to drop. Without sufficient caloric intake, your body goes into survival mode to conserve energy and prevent weight lose.
• DIET TOO RESTRICTIVE - It might sound counterintuitive but food restrictions set you up for failure. Being too restrictive is not sustainable and leads to a fad diet burnout with binge eating and future weight gain.
• DIET SELF-SABOTAGE - Diet self-sabotage involves much more than just cheating on your menu plan. Setting unrealistic goals or failing to give yourself credit for what you've accomplished are good examples of diet self-sabotage.

From the first forbidden food in the Garden of Eden, food restrictions have led to weight management problems. You may need to give up on the idea of perfect control of your diet to improve your overall self-control by eliminating food-related stress and anxiety. In the long haul, the quality of food choices for your personalized diet plan may prove to be more important than whether you're following a low-fat or low-carb diet. A personalized diet plan from Metabolic Research Center provides the guidelines for you to follow, and our experienced weight loss consultants provide the guidance to ensure your weight loss program is successful.