Category: Diet

According to a recent NPD Group survey, the number of Americans dieting has dropped by eleven percentage points since 1991 (from 31% to 20%). Harry Balzer, the Vice President of the NPD Group, was quoted as saying, “Our data suggests that dieters are giving up on diets more quickly than in the past.” It wouldn’t be too far of a leap to say that the proliferation of fad diets over the past couple of decades has something to do with that, and one fitness expert has told me that a line should be drawn.

Continue reading Alan Aragon on Fad Diets: “Garbage”

At the time of writing, a typical day’s eating for me is lunch at 1pm, dinner at 7pm, and a dessert afterwards (I skip breakfast). I will typically feel a little peckish at around 5pm, but I know that I do not need food at that time. After all, dinner is only a couple of hours away. However, my brain often needs reminding of that fact, which is why I sometimes turn to my strategy of ‘sensory overload’. I’m going to reveal that strategy in this article.

Continue reading How to Stop Hunger Pangs With ‘Sensory Overload’

I recently argued that yo-yo dieting can be good for you if you take a holistic approach to health. However, I recognise that such a statement, if not properly qualified, could be misconstrued. There is no doubt in my mind that the healthy bounds of yo-yo dieting can be (and often are) abused, but that in itself does not make yo-yo dieting a bad thing.

Continue reading When Yo-Yo Dieting Goes Wrong

Calorie tracking websites and apps are hugely popular – many people will go to meticulous lengths to log their calorie consumption. That doesn’t jive with the Healthy Enough approach though. Fastidiously tracking calorie consumption is far too time consuming (and not particularly accurate). However, simply tracking what you eat is easy enough to do, and can make a huge difference to your weight loss efforts.

Continue reading How a Food Diary Can Help You Lose Weight

In a recent post I argued that there is no reliable evidence for the negative health implications of yo-yo dieting. Today I want to go one step further by arguing that yo-yo dieting can in fact be good for you – perhaps not in the strictest biological sense, but in terms of your general health and wellbeing.

Continue reading Why Yo-Yo Dieting Can Be Healthy

Back in 2009 I did quite a lot of running and followed a pretty strict diet.

I would calorie count down to the last gram of food, keeping a detailed log of everything I ate. It was utterly ridiculous. However, it seemed to be effective – over the course of nine months or so I lost nearly 30lbs and was the lightest I have ever been in my adult life.

It doesn’t mean that my method was optimum though. After all, if you’re running 20–30 miles per week and eating dramatically less than you normally would, the weight is bound to fall off you. One thing’s for sure: my new eating regime certainly wasn’t enjoyable.

In this post I want to explain why calorie counting isn’t the only approach to dieting, and offer up a completely different (and far more intuitive) approach that will never leave you hungry.

Continue reading Calorie Counting – There’s a Better Way

For many of us, our diets fail in-between meals. We might eat quite healthily when it comes to mealtime, only to be let down by unhealthy snacking in the afternoon and evening. With that in mind, logic dictates that if you can modify your snacking behavior, you can improve your diet and lose weight. In this article I have one simple suggestion that can help you do just that.

The key is to make yourself work for it. Don’t ban yourself from eating the snacks that you love, but make the process of getting your hands on them more difficult.

Will this really help? Science says yes – it’s all to do with convenience.

Continue reading One Simple Way to Eat Fewer Unhealthy Snacks

We’ve all been told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Have you ever questioned that axiom? If you are willing to divorce yourself from the idea that breakfast is a necessity, you may be able to adjust your diet to better suit your body’s needs and lose weight at the same time.

Cutting out an entire meal can seem pretty daunting, especially considering that breakfast is often touted as the most important meal of the day. Past studies have claimed that eating breakfast provides many benefits for health and weight loss: it boosts your metabolism, prevents you from overeating, positively affects your mood and more (depending upon who you speak to).

However, these claims are often based upon dated, small-scale studies that follow spurious lines of reasoning. More recent studies have concluded that breakfast is no more important than any other meal when it comes to weight loss, and that skipping it can in fact lead to weight loss.

Continue reading Why You Should Skip Breakfast

According to Science Daily, the number one reason diets fail is because dieters underestimate the amount of calories they consume. In my opinion, the number one reason diets fail is because dieters want to eat things that most diets don’t permit. Fortunately, there are a number of things you can do to lose weight that don’t involve giving up your favourite foods. In this post we’re going to take a look at breakfast.

Continue reading How to Lose Weight Without Dieting [Breakfast Edition]