Public Health Encourages Life Style Changes Not Fad Dieting

Monday, 18 January 2016 08:49

Most people will be giving up on that New Year's Resolution to lose weight, but Public Health encourages you to celebrate the small successes.

Now that we are a few weeks into the New Year, it is the season when people start to break their resolutions.

One of the most popular New Year's Resolutions is always to lose weight. However local public health officials are reminding people to avoid fad diets and yo-yo dieting. Oxford County Public Health Nutritionist & Registered Dietitian Katie Neil says fad diets almost never work.

"Well sometimes depending on the type of diet that is being used, if nutrients or calories are being deprived for a long period of time, this can really cause the body to go into a starvation state which means you might not actually be using your food as efficiently as you like and your body might instead start to store nutrients for fear of being deprived again."

Neil adds the fad diets make it easier to gain the weight back when you do slip up. She recommends sticking with the basics, eating healthy, exercise and setting attainable goals for yourself if you want to lose weight.

"Your best bet is to find something sustainable and sticking to the basics: healthy eating, getting enough sleep, getting a variety of food intake, physical activity, and managing our stress. So the more we start to think about health behaviours and kind of leave weight out of the picture the more we will be successful with our health."

Neil also recommends setting attainable goals for yourself.

"So make a healthy eating goal at the beginning of the week that is small, achievable, and realistic for yourself and at the end of the week kind of check in with yourself and make any adjustments that you need to for the next week and move on, because short term goals and successes can really help with our long term motivation and health behaviour change."