Lose Weight Misconceptions

People are always trying to lose weight: “Americans spend upwards of 60 billion dollars annually to lose weight”. Most weight loss tactics usually involve some type of quick way to shed those extra pounds such as diet foods, starvation, diet pills, supplements, eliminating certain foods, detoxes, etc. This list of ways to lose weight can go on and on, and they come with many different beliefs and misconceptions. People who lose weight in this manner have a tendency to gain the weight back, and often gain even more weight than when they started. Most of these ideas and plans to lose weight are only glorified advertisements to make losing weight look simple and easy, leading to many misconceptions to losing weight.
One misconception about …show more content…
A fad diet, such as a detox, is supposed to energize the dieter as well as cleanse their body, but a detox is another quick process that won’t give dieters the results they were hoping for. There is no proof that detoxing is cleansing your body and disposing of unwanted body substances. Unlike fasting, detoxing allows dieters to drink certain things that may give them small amounts of energy; that energy, however, is short lasting. Detoxes limit users to dangerously low calorie intakes, slowing their metabolism. A detox does not provide a source of protein for the dieter, nor does it supply a proper source of nutrition for the dieter to function on a day-to-day basis. Due to lack of nutrition, disadvantages to detoxing include fatigue, cramping, bloating, and nausea. Nutrition experts have also found possible long term risks that could occur from detoxes. Lona Sandon, a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, stated “long-term fasts lead to muscle breakdown and a shortage of many needed nutrients”. Although this quick weight loss regimen appeals to many, the weight loss is not permanent while the risks can be. Detox users are more prone to suffer from vitamin deficiencies, the breakdown of muscles, infections, inflammation, and blood-sugar problems. Due to the instability, detoxes are not meant to be continued over a length of time because the body loses sources of key nutrients. …show more content…
Eating no junk food seems to make sense when you are trying to lose weight, but it can also cause a different type of diet destruction for you. Although banishing junk food from your daily consumption is a healthy option and will make for faster weight loss results, it may not affect you in the ways you’re expecting. Many people start a diet such as this to lose weight, but it doesn’t last long; the biggest reason is that the dieter has nothing to look forward to throughout the weight loss process. If you are working out and feel the need to eat some type of junk food, then do so with portion control. A great time to reward yourself is when you reach a new limit and feel proud of yourself for doing so, such as staying on the treadmill an extra two minutes or doing ten more crunches than you used to be able to do. Small goals and guilty pleasures will make weight loss seem like less of a chore. Dieters will be less inclined to give up on the diet if they focus on the smaller steps of the process. Instead of debating how they are going to lose twenty pounds before next summer, people will be focusing on what they have to do to eat that cookie on Saturday. Another reason junk food shouldn’t be completely shunned from dieters is because recent studies are showing that the low-fat food and diet drinks we are consuming during a diet aren’t as great as we