Talking about the success or failure of a diet is usually associated with the achievement of the initial objectives that were raised when the person decided to go on a diet, but we should not stop there. We must look beyond that we have been able to lose those X kilos that we had marked.
And that’s where adherence comes into play, perhaps the most important effect that a diet can have on our health, since not only will it mean that we have lost those extra kilos, but it will generate a series of adaptations that allow us to continue maintaining the alimentary habits introduced during the period that we have been on a diet.
The concept of adherence
The grip is the most important effect when it comes to following a diet and that it is effective in the long run, but maybe there are people who wonder what exactly adherence to the concept of dieting.
Talking about adherence in terms of diets means talking about those nutritional guidelines that we have started more or less time ago, we are able to keep them with the passage of time. That is, it means that, after a time (ten months, one year, three years …) we are able to continue maintaining those eating habits. It does not mean that we continue with the same diet , but that we have been able to adopt eating patterns based on the diet that we started at the time .
Factors that can make your diet do not generate adherence
Therefore, given that the adherence are the patterns and patterns that we are able to maintain over time, we must make a small list with some of the factors that could ruin this adherence and cause the desired effect not to be generated and, therefore, the diet followed loses efficacy or, in extreme cases, the dreaded rebound effect occurs .
Do not vary the diet every so often
One of the keys to being able to follow the diet with the passage of time is that we vary each time as adaptations and changes occur in our body : if we are following a diet to lose fat , there will come a point where our basal metabolism decreases to such an extent that, if we want to continue lowering, we should readjust the diet. It also happens if we are raising our muscle mass. Every so often we must recalculate and readjust our diet .
Eating a diet that is too aggressive or restrictive
If our goal is to lose fat, there is a minimum and maximum percentage in terms of the number of calories we can reduce from our daily intake. Generally, a reduction of around 10-15% of our calories is recommended at most. A restriction higher than 20% could cause a low intake and, therefore, that the diet is too aggressive for our body.
Celebrity diets or detox diets
If there is something that should concern us when we talk about visible results of a diet are the diets that advertise us as ” the amazing diet that Fulanito performs and that promises unparalleled results “, the so marketed detox diets or ” miracle diets”.
All these diets are so ** dangerous for our health ** as ineffective in the long term, since in addition to a sudden loss of weight (which is produced by the drastic restriction of calories ingested) will not generate any adherence.
The environment that surrounds us and our willpower
Although they are two different factors, both can be related, so that if we are surrounded by an obesogenic environment (we recently made an article about it), it will be more difficult to reduce the chances of “skating” in our diet and more willpower we should have .
When we talk about obesogenic environment , for those who have not read our article, we refer to social events in which they tend to “dispose” of large amounts of food such as birthdays, celebrations, meetings of friends, meals or Christmas dinners , business lunches or dinners, supermarkets with offers in pastries and ultra-processed foods …
Create unrealistic objectives
If when we start our diet we set ourselves the objective of losing ten kilos in a month, we will be setting an unrealistic goal , since it implies a great loss of weight in a very short time . In terms of weight loss, what can be considered reasonable is a loss that is at most four or five kilos per month (normal can be around three kilos per month to be a gradual loss and generate a grip that we maintain with the passage of time).
Lack of visible results
The lack of visible results in our may occur for two main reasons: either because we have not met the calorie intake and we have skipped the diet or because it is not well designed and according to our needs .
The second case usually occurs when we give a diet taken from Google in a generic way with the title on the ” 1500 Kcals Diet ” sheet (I say 1500 for putting a number). The big problem that we find with this, is that these professionals we go to have not been updating their knowledge (as every professional should do, whatever the sector may be), as well as not being specialists in the subject as if they can be it. mentioned dieticians-nutritionists.
Unfortunately, what I say happens much more often than would be desirable. Here, two things can happen:
- That the person receiving the diet lose weight very quickly , which usually happens because those X calories of the diet are insufficient by its constitution and therefore the diet is very aggressive , which not only will not generateany adhesion , but very likely at the time that this diet is abandoned the rebound effect occurs .Normally this type of people usually praises the benefits of the diet and recommend it to acquaintances, friends or relatives: first, that a diet has worked for you does not mean that it works for others, so do not recommend it. Recommends PROFESSIONALS (yes, in capital letters, of those who do things well), not “copy-paste” diets.
And here I must look back to the professional word quoted above: sometimes we can meet doctors or professionals in the health sector and make statements as surprising and striking as dangerous, as we can see in the following article by a doctor family in which, among other things, we find affirmations like that ” it does not matter that our diet is unbalanced diet because they are only one or two months”.
- That diet does not work for that person and either lose weight or even until he wins, which will end up leaving the diet without it has generated any adherence.This can happen because the diet that we have prescribed (yes, what we said 1500 Kcals) does not mean a decrease in Kcals enough to produce a significant loss of weight. We must understand that normally people want “immediate” results, and needing four or five months to lose two kilos of weight will cause the diet to be abandoned prematurely.
How should a slimming diet be able to maintain it over time
In the previous points we have already mentioned some of the keys that a diet must possess so that it is not only effective but also has an associated adherencewith the passage of time:
- Quality of the food that makes up our diet : some years ago, there was talk that what mattered was the total calculation of the calories consumed and that we had to look for the caloric deficit if we wanted to lose weight. However, in recent years the current of nutritionism has been moving to seek the quality of food over calories. What do I want to say this? To understand what I mean, I recommend you read our article ” To lose weight is not enough to eat healthy food: you also have to stop eating the insane ” as well as visit the blog ” Realfooding “.Without being the main factor when talking about diet, we need that each diet be calculated individually to adapt to the needs of each person. This will ensure that caloric restraint is adequate and is not too aggressive (which would generate an untenable sense of hunger) or very lax (which would either produce no weight loss or if it would be very slow and it would provoke boredom and abandonment of it).
This is why we used to put the word professional in quotes, since unfortunately there are many health professionals who distribute “copy-paste” diets right and left without performing any analysis on patients. A good dietitian-nutritionist will give you a complete questionnaire and a previous study before going on to plan a diet, to be able to adjust it as much as possible to your needs.
- Variety of foods : Basing your diet on the intake of two or three foods will cause you to get bored right away. I say this because it is very common to see diets like ” chicken-vegetable-fruit ” and that do not leave there. Being on a diet does not mean either going hungry or having to eat exclusively two or three foods.A diet must be varied so that it is easy to follow and therefore allows us and changes our eating patterns gradually and, therefore, generates a long-term adherence .
- Have patience : we can not pretend to go from eating continuously in a “daily free buffet” to a diet of X calories in which we banish ultra-processed foods and can only afford a ” trap food ” (for cheat food we’re going to refer to skip the nutritional guidelines in a controlled manner) a week.Patience is a determining factor, first to not generate unnecessary stress to our body (which is going to have enough with caloric reduction), and second because as we said above, the ideal is a gradual loss of weight around three kilos per month (may reach four or five kilos of loss per month).
- Continued : a diet can not be something that is done in a timely manner after the summer or after Christmas, because then we will cause the body two rebound effects in a year , with consequent damage to our health.For the diet to work, it must be something that we maintain over time (and as we have said before that we should readjust periodically) so that the adherencewe seek is generated and avoid the rebound effects and massive binge eating.
- Beware of the media and social networks : if we decide to go on a diet with the goal of losing weight , we must be very careful with the information we read and to which we pay attention , since sometimes we find articles with such catastrophic titles as ” Dieting makes you fat, ” published by someone claiming to be a nutritionist and founder of the Food Disorders Team at Durand Hospital.In the aforementioned article, this “expert in nutrition” says, among other pearls that ” depriving yourself of consuming rich foods for the mere purpose of losing weight does not help .”
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