Diet breakdown - what to do, how to return to weight loss and exercise, stop relapse

Every day in the life of a person who has once firmly decided to lose weight, a variety of situations occur. Some of them may well become a trigger for breaking the diet.

Most risky:

• experience negative emotions while dieting (for example, angry, depressed);
• spontaneously attend parties;
• participate in holidays;
• eat in restaurants;
• travel.

Chronic fatigue and stress can also provoke an annoying breakdown.

However, nutritionists say that breaking a diet, even if it is considered the best of the best, is absolutely normal. After all, you are experiencing a change in established eating habits and the so-called “withdrawal” after giving up harmful foods that you have most likely consumed for many years.

Features of proper nutrition

Some people think about proper nutrition as a means of losing weight. This problem is acute in many countries.

Therefore, the promotion of a healthy lifestyle and proper nutrition in the USA and Europe is carried out at the state level. Thanks to a balanced diet, you can get rid of extra pounds, chronic diseases, and improve your quality of life.

Some people think about proper nutrition as a means of losing weight.

Basic principles of PP:

1. Regular meals. It is ideal to eat at the same time or at regular intervals (3-4 hours). Having become accustomed to receiving food by the hour, the stomach will be ready to process it. Digestion will improve and bloating and gas will no longer bother you.
2. The diet should correspond to the lifestyle. People live at different rhythms. Some work in an office from 9 to 18, others spend most of their time at home, or in a car, or work at night. Appointment times will be different for everyone. An individual approach will make proper nutrition a part of life, and not just another unsuccessful attempt to lose weight.
3. The daily diet is compiled in accordance with the goal. People come to proper nutrition for various reasons: excess weight, lack of muscle mass, health problems, etc. The diet will depend on the goal that needs to be achieved. Those who want to build muscle mass increase the level of animal protein; those suffering from gastrointestinal problems - remove foods that cause problems, etc.
4. The predominance of natural products in the diet. The basis of proper nutrition is simple foods without additives: meat, vegetables, fruits, cereals, etc. Try to avoid industrial products. In addition to preservatives and chemicals, semi-finished products contain hidden salts and sugars. These are useless calories.
5. Avoid depleted foods. This applies to low-fat products. Animal fats are needed for the normal functioning of the hormonal and nervous systems. Choose products with fat content from 1 to 5%. This is a safe level of fat to avoid a set of weight problems and provide the body with healthy fats.
6. Avoid food junk. Chips, corn sticks, and crackers contain a lot of calories, have low nutritional value, and cause the appearance of subcutaneous pimples, acne, and allergies.
7. Avoid overeating. When choosing the right products, you need to know when to stop. Excess calories lead to extra pounds.

General information

Very often, for those who decide to make changes in life aimed at losing weight and getting healthier, two questions are relevant: firstly, how to start practicing healthy eating, and secondly, how to stay on a diet. After all, short-term diets, which some people try to go on in order to lose weight as quickly as possible, subsequently result in the extra pounds returning again. Therefore, those who intend to seriously change their lives need to choose a suitable long-term nutrition system and clearly understand what to do during the diet so as not to break down and not violate its principles. This article will talk about how not to fail on a diet.

Why short-term diets don't work

Natural products should predominate in the diet.
Switch to PP for weight loss - a healthy and effective way to get rid of excess weight.

But most people prefer short-term diets. They promise stunning results in a few days. Only it doesn't work.

Why is this happening:

1. At the end of the diet, the person returns to regular food, receiving more calories than he can burn.
2. Diets with strict restrictions provoke a slowdown in metabolism. The body tries to spend less energy and store more. This leads to the fact that the weight not only returns, but increases.
3. Poor nutrition during a diet deprives the body of the necessary substances for normal functioning. After such experiments, the body tries to replenish the missing elements. Hormones are released into the blood and provoke an uncontrollable attack of gluttony.

Be sure to read: Diet for teenagers of different ages: rules, allowed and prohibited foods, weekly menu

When switching to proper nutrition, such problems do not arise. A person receives all the necessary substances on time. The diet remains varied. This approach to nutrition allows you to lose weight and maintain it for life.

What is the reason for the failure?

To understand the underlying reason for each diet failure, you should mentally return to your childhood. From the moment of birth, the child has no idea about fatty and sweet foods, since he eats only what is given to him (breast milk or its substitute).

His body instantly recognizes where is sweet and where is salty. Of course, the baby will prefer sweets. Therefore, the child eats sweet porridge with undisguised pleasure, thanks to which he gains weight. Mom is overjoyed with her good appetite and adds sugar to her food again. Thus, the baby becomes attached to sweets. The natural taste of foods and dishes no longer attracts him. Now he only wants to eat sweets. Naturally, he refuses the rest.

As a child gets a little older, he expands his food horizons. He becomes familiar with other flavors and textures of foods. But there is one “but”. If from early childhood our parents taught us to eat rich, fatty and sweet dishes, then this kind of food will turn out to be the most delicious for us. Soft buns baked with love by our mother, delicious stuffed pies from our grandmother and mind-blowing cakes, as well as fragrant fried potatoes and a huge variety of other tastes of childhood are forever “written” in our memory.

When we smell a familiar scent, it serves as a stimulus to our sense of smell. At the same time, we are limited by the ban imposed by the diet. All this puts our body under stress. It is natural that he makes attempts to return to his familiar environment with the same familiar food. This is a healthy and completely normal reaction. And weakness has absolutely nothing to do with it.

So, if for 20-30 years you have been devouring dumplings generously sprinkled with mayonnaise and other “delicacies” with enviable consistency, then the strict food restrictions prescribed in the diet will sooner or later provoke a breakdown and the expected attack of bulimia. Much worse if the result is anorexia. After all, willpower can be destructive to the body. First, the body “turns off” the taste buds, and then the digestive system simply “goes on an indefinite vacation.” After all, if there is no food, then there is no need to function. The consequences are very sad.

How to switch to proper nutrition

So, the decision to switch to proper nutrition has been made. But where to start? Analyze your diet. It's better to do this visually.

Analyze your diet

Take photos or write down everything you eat in a separate notebook. You need to record main meals, snacks and everything eaten in passing. Along with your food records, note the time and weight of the portion.

This is the only way to identify nutritional weaknesses.

After analyzing the records, it becomes clear what a person eats, when and how much. The analysis will help determine what needs to be changed in the diet.

Please pay attention to three points:

1. What do you eat most often? Are there vegetables, fruits, cereals, and protein products in the diet?
2. Serving size. This is the case when size matters. Even if you eat exclusively healthy foods, you can easily gain excess weight and develop health problems.
3. Diet. The habits of refusing to eat during the day and having a heavy dinner, ignoring breakfasts, and replacing lunch with chocolate lead to excess weight, problems with the gastrointestinal tract, pancreas and liver. To switch to proper nutrition, you need to learn to eat on a schedule. And, surprisingly, we are not talking about the need to eat 5-6 times a day. This diet is not suitable for everyone. We are talking about regular meals. Remember, breakfast, lunch and dinner are mandatory meals. It's best if they happen within the same period of time. And snacks are needed to satisfy your hunger between them, nothing more.

These three points will help you create a diet that will not only be beneficial to the body, but will also not cause disgust after just a few days.

Developing new eating habits

Perhaps developing new eating habits is the most difficult stage on the path to proper nutrition. Complex and important. It has been proven that a person develops a habit within 90 days. This period is the most difficult when switching to PP.

Perhaps developing new eating habits is the most difficult stage on the path to proper nutrition.

Here are some tips to help you develop new eating habits:

1. Do everything gradually. First, give up sweets, get rid of “fast food”, start eating breakfast regularly, etc. The gradual transition to PP will be as painless as possible, without disruptions.
2. Use spices. Most people complain that when they eat healthy, they don't have enough bright flavors. Most industrial products are made with the addition of large amounts of salt, spices and flavor enhancers. Additives interrupt the natural taste of food, and taste buds no longer recognize it. Gradually, the taste buds are cleared, and the simplest foods acquire taste. To make your life easier during the transition period, use natural herbs and spices: coriander, pepper, turmeric, herbs de Provence
3. Diversify your diet. It may seem that proper nutrition is monotonous and consists only of buckwheat and boiled breast. In fact, this is not true. There are many simple, healthy dishes (including desserts) that will make your diet interesting.
4. Find yourself an interesting hobby. A favorite activity that brings joy will help take your mind off thoughts about food. Remember that a person eats to live, and not vice versa.

Be sure to read: What you need to eat to lose weight: allowed and prohibited foods, menu for the week, recipes

Bring snacks with you

Snacks are optional meals. But many adherents of proper nutrition include snacks in their diet. This allows you to avoid hunger pangs and maintain a constant level of insulin in the blood.

For a snack, it is better to give preference to vegetables, fruits (in the first half of the day), nuts, dried fruits, and dairy products. They satisfy hunger well and are low in calories (except for nuts and dried fruits).

Don't forget to take a snack with you on the road, to work or for a walk. When you get hungry, you don’t have to look for a fast food restaurant and scold yourself for showing weakness.

Mistakes of losing weight

For a snack, it is better to give preference to vegetables and fruits (in the first half of the day).
Effective weight loss is a long-term process. It requires constant work: control over nutrition, regular physical activity, and cosmetic procedures.

Counting on instant results, people make mistakes that prevent them from losing excess weight for many years.

Here are the most common ones:

1. Complete refusal of one of the food elements. We are talking about fats and carbohydrates. Each of these elements takes part in the functioning of the body. If you exclude them from the diet, after some time the body will demand to compensate for the shortage. This leads to breakdowns. The person begins to eat everything.
2. Using drugs for weight loss without consulting a nutritionist. Let's not hide the fact that there are actually drugs on the market that can help reduce excess weight. But they don't work without proper nutrition.
3. Monotonous menu. Many people who are losing weight limit their meals to two or three dishes. After a short period of time, this diet gets boring, and you urgently want to please yourself with something. When losing weight, try to cook as varied a variety of dishes as possible. Then weight loss will turn from hard labor into an exciting period of life.
4. Don’t put off your life until “when I lose weight.” This is the worst mistake of all those who lose weight. Remember that tomorrow never comes. The more interesting events there are in your life while losing weight, the better the result will be.

Eliminating the consequences of a breakdown

But what to do if you still break down? Of course, you tried to prevent a breakdown and took all measures. And yet, what happened happened. So, a few basic recommendations:

1. Under no circumstances should you be afraid to see a whole kilogram in plus on the scales in the morning. In the morning, excess weight is mainly represented by fluid retained in the body and the remains of incompletely digested food.
2. Your stomach didn’t have time to digest everything you took in. To correct the situation, you need to make adjustments to your diet for 3 days. You can eat light soup and vegetable salads. Drink more water. After such a recovery period, you should return to your diet.
3. If you fail, don’t give up and don’t quit your diet. It will be enough to just continue it as if nothing happened. When arranging a “unloading”, it is advisable to make it as varied as possible, but at the same time low in calories.

Menu diagram for PP

Each person is individual. Gender, age, occupation, the presence of chronic diseases and many other factors affect the diet. The main advantage of proper nutrition is that you can take all these factors into account.

Don’t put off life until “when I lose weight”

Let's consider the PP diagram:

Breakfast:

• porridge (any cereal that requires cooking);
• fruit (you can even have bananas for breakfast);
• hot drink without sugar (tea, coffee, compote).

Snack

• dried fruits, nuts, fruits.

Dinner:

• lean meat or fish;
• side dish in the form of cereals, durum pasta, cooked vegetables;
• raw vegetables (salad dressed with natural yoghurt, butter, lemon juice).

Second snack:

• fermented milk products without sugar: kefir, yogurt, cheese, cottage cheese.

Dinner:

• easily digestible protein in the form of lean fish, boiled eggs, seafood;
• vegetables.

It is not difficult to adhere to such a scheme. It easily fits many dishes. This makes the diet varied and balanced.

Sample menu for the week:

Be sure to read: How to lose weight after 40 years for a woman: advice from a nutritionist on choosing a diet for the week

Foods to Avoid

Try to avoid products with complex ingredients. The fewer components were used during the preparation of the product, the healthier it is.

Pay attention to calorie content. The inscriptions “light”, “low-calorie”, “fitness” are just a marketing ploy. This has nothing to do with proper nutrition or diet.

Avoid liquid calories: sugary carbonated drinks, juices (especially packaged ones), coffee with syrups, sweet yoghurts, etc.

These products are not perceived as food, and drinking several glasses of lemonade daily can exceed your daily calorie intake several times.

What is a "breakdown"

I was on a diet, ate right, counted calories, didn’t allow myself anything sweet, not even buckwheat or pasta, if we were talking about low-carb or keto, and then - BAM! - darkness... And then you find yourself on a mountain of candy and chocolate wrappers, an empty bucket of ice cream on your head, a half-eaten piece of cake in your hand, your stomach is so full of sweets that it’s hard to breathe. Congratulations - you've nailed it! Happens.

This also happens with training. You go like hell 4-5 times a week to the gym and the stadium, and then you can’t force yourself to get there. Even kick and drag. Of course, in this case the breakdown does not occur as sharply as in nutrition, but the thing is no less dangerous.

I missed a workout once, I missed two, and then I didn’t even notice how a couple of months flew by without jogging or “rocking.” This has happened to me once in the 20 years that I have been training with weights. One time that turned into an eight month break.

That is, a breakdown is a sudden overeating on a diet and an unexpected break in training, which can be dangerously prolonged.

It is important to eat natural food

The basis of proper nutrition is natural products. They give us energy for life, nutrients for the normal functioning of all organs, and do not clog the body with various preservatives.

The basis of proper nutrition is natural products

By giving up artificial products, a person gets rid of not only excess weight, but also health problems. The condition of the skin and hair improves, and more energy appears.