If you have struggled to lose weight with a number of different fad diets only to watch it reappear and multiply, you may think that a raw food diet is just another one of them. After yo-yoing up and down, it’s only natural to be skeptical.
But your past lack of success may be the result of two things that were actually working against you without your knowing it &nda sh; and a raw food diet can help with both of those. What are those two things that have sabotaged you in the past? Unrealistic expectations and diets based on unhealthy eating.
First let’s talk about the unrealistic expectations. Your deepest wish may be that you wake up tomorrow and all of your unwanted pounds have melted off in your sleep. And there are companies that will gladly tell you that’s possible while they take your money.
But the truth is that any diet that leads you to believe that you can achieve lasting weight loss by taking a magic pill or eating only certain kinds of foods for a short period of time is selling you a dream. If what you are eating now has made you fat, it is possible to lose weight by changing what you eat for a short period of time. But as soon as you go back to eating what made you fat in the first place, you’ll gain the weight back. So you will have to become willing to change what you eat for long term health instead of short term weight loss.
Now we can address the unhealthy eating that some fad diets promote. When you lose weight by eating only certain foods, like watermelon or sauerkraut, what you are really doing is starving yourself. By limiting your intake of nutrients, you run the risk of causing real harm to your health. Sure, you may lose weight while you stick to that kind of diet, but you cannot live on it. So you will have to eat other foods if you don’t want to ruin your health.
So that brings us back to the basis of real long term weight loss: healthy eating and a healthy body. Think of it this way: the very definition of ‘health’ includes a body that is at a healthy weight. So when you change your diet for long term health, you will also maintain long term healthy weight.