Advice for first days of diets

[JohnL12]

I am a serial crash dieter and binge eater. When I am on a diet i find it quite boring, but by no means impossible. I think and read quite a bit about dieting and exercise. What interests me at the moment is the first few days of a diet, and what advice people would give to others just starting out.

My diets are always rather extreme, cutting back on calories massively and doing lots of exercise. So after a few weeks of binge eating my new diet looks like a massive mountain to climb. The first few days are always the hardest. I always get headaches for the first couple of days and so need painkillers, but after these days and shrinking my stomach, the diet seems a lot easier. After a week you can already see and feel results, and so you are in a positive mood to diet for the long term.

Do people prefer to start off on a very strict diet, which is tough but you can see how it is possible to loss weight quickly, or a slower starting diet which will be easier to get into?

If you have the will power to do a harsh diet imediately then thats what I would recommend. Its hard at first, really hard, and for a couple of days you will feel dreadful. However, once you have weighed yourself after the first week you will feel so good that you will look forward to the next weeks dieting and the scales after it.

What worries me with people going on slow diets is that its easy to lose motivation. People are already a bit depressed because they have to go on a diet, so after a week of slow dieting and maybe just losing 1 lb they see a massive mountain in front of them that will take weeks to climb and give up. They have felt bad about dieting, so they may as well have started on a harder diet and lost more weight.

What do other people think about the best way to actually start diets?

 

[Harold14370]

I'm almost tempted to think you are a troll. Wouldn't the fact that you are a serial crash dieter make you think that perhaps your way is not working?

 

[JohnL12]

Well, what a nice place this must be.

I sign up and post a totally inoffensive post that doesn't insult anybody and I'm accused of being a troll. What in my post could possibly make you think I'm a troll?

The only person on this thread so far to have posted something offensive is you. The only person to have posted personal insults is you. The only person who has atacked someones personal diet efforts is you.

In my post I simply stated what I thought was the best way of starting a diet and asked what other people's thoughts were.

I'm still interested in what people's thoughts on this subject are.

 

[ecky1]

I have come to the conclusion after years of yoyo dieting that crash diets are definitely not the way to go. I have even decided that dieting is not the way to go either but to make a permanent lifestyle change about the way you eat and exercise. This means that you can sometimes eat foods that are forbidden on most diets but in smaller quantities as long as you make up for it by eating healthier at other times. You won't see very fast drastic results but you will get there in the end and hopefully stay there.
I've lost over 11 kgs in the last 4 months like this and feel better than I have felt for years. I know that you probably want faster results but it's not worth it in the long run. My 20 year old daughter has lost 9 kgs in this amount of time. She has lost less as she indulgies herself more than I do with McDonalds or pizza and alcohol every weekend.
Good luck however you want to do it.
And for the record I didn't think that anything about your post was troll-like.
Val

 

[Harold14370]

Well, I did give you the benefit of the doubt, by saying I was "almost tempted." But seriously, if you have been at this a while, you surely must have heard that serial dieting, and especially crash dieting, is not the right way to go about it. So, there is no good answer to what is the right way to go on a crash diet.

 

[Jericho]

I am a serial crash dieter and binge eater. When I am on a diet i find it quite boring, but by no means impossible. I think and read quite a bit about dieting and exercise. What interests me at the moment is the first few days of a diet, and what advice people would give to others just starting out.

My diets are always rather extreme, cutting back on calories massively and doing lots of exercise. So after a few weeks of binge eating my new diet looks like a massive mountain to climb. The first few days are always the hardest. I always get headaches for the first couple of days and so need painkillers, but after these days and shrinking my stomach, the diet seems a lot easier. After a week you can already see and feel results, and so you are in a positive mood to diet for the long term.

Do people prefer to start off on a very strict diet, which is tough but you can see how it is possible to loss weight quickly, or a slower starting diet which will be easier to get into?

If you have the will power to do a harsh diet imediately then thats what I would recommend. Its hard at first, really hard, and for a couple of days you will feel dreadful. However, once you have weighed yourself after the first week you will feel so good that you will look forward to the next weeks dieting and the scales after it.

What worries me with people going on slow diets is that its easy to lose motivation. People are already a bit depressed because they have to go on a diet, so after a week of slow dieting and maybe just losing 1 lb they see a massive mountain in front of them that will take weeks to climb and give up. They have felt bad about dieting, so they may as well have started on a harder diet and lost more weight.

What do other people think about the best way to actually start diets?

The best way isn't doing a crash diet to see alot of weight gain BECAUSE when you readjust yourself, that weight you loss will come back and come back HARD.

Instead, you make small changes. You make the changes in how you eat that lasts the rest of your life. It sounds a lot more that your problem is you haven't learned how to eat. You treat the word diet as a four letter word instead of what it really is, a change in lifestyle. When you start to lose weight, you won't be successful if you don't realize it will take time.

Everyone has the right to do things their way but when you come to a website that tries to help people lose weight a safe and healthy way, and you post something that is completely counter to that effort, you need to expect people saying (in so many words) that you are wrong.