How Long Before Weight Comes Off When on a Diet?

Most people dive into the next fad diet without knowing how their bodies work, or why THIS particular diet is supposed to be so great. They very seldom question the science behind it, or the health aspects of it. The main question on their mind is "How fast will I lose weight?", or "How long before the weight comes off on this diet"? It is difficult for anyone to answer these questions honestly and accurately because, even if the diet is the most effective diet in the universe, we are all different. Many factors, such as our age, sex, current weight and physical condition, heredity, as well as many others will be involved when it comes to any change in the body whether for good or for bad. Another problem is that one honest reply is one that most dieters do NOT want to hear is, "You really don't want to lose weight too rapidly!" Another confusing fact is that people are asking how fast the WEIGHT will come off when what they really should be asking is how fast the FAT will come off. Anyone truly seeking healthy, permanent weight loss in hopes of living a longer, happier, more fulfilling life needs to avoid diets anyway. Simply put, diets don't work! If any diet which has already come along really worked, there would be a lot more skinnier people out there, and there would not be such a large number of people jumping from diet to diet in hopes of finally hitting one which DOES work! I am not going to discuss the topic of the problem with diets in depth in this article as I have already done so in several previous articles of mine. However, I do want to say that it is not in the best interest of healthy weight loss to lose weight too fast...no matter what the method! One ad I have seen several times on TV recently goes to great lengths to exclaim very intensely that its weight loss product will not only cause rapid weight loss, but that some percent of every pound lost (I believe they say 70%) will be "pure fat". That's great, but some of the remaining percent will be muscle tissue. Lean muscle tissue is crucial, not only to health and fitness, but is a major factor in healthy, permanent weight loss. On average, when weight loss is greater than one to one-and-a-half pounds a week, the body begins to lose lean muscle mass. The faster the weight loss, the more lean muscle mass the body loses. I guess that if the goal is to look good at the 20th high school reunion next week, no real harm done...except that when you return to your old eating habits, or stop taking the weight loss product, the weight will return, and even more of it will be fat. This will make the next weight loss effort, by diet pill or diet, even harder, and you will probably gain more weight in the meantime since you have decreased the lean muscle mass which was helping you stay at whatever level you had achieved before the diet! Most diets work on the principle of depriving the body of food (i.e. calories), and this is praiseworthy in itself. However, when the nutrition normally provided by one's diet (the list of what you eat) is reduced greatly and rapidly, the body has certain defenses which swing into action to prevent what it sees as starvation. These defenses will prevent healthy permanent weight loss and will set the dieter up for almost certain failure...as have all the diets they have probably tried before! Again, I have covered many of these events in other articles. Here, I would just like to repeat that for permanent, healthy weight loss, a lifestyle change to regular, moderate exercise, combined with sensible eating habits will do more for health, fitness, and weight loss than any diet or diet pill Don't worry about how long before weight comes off with a diet. The speed is not important. Getting more physical activity, combined with healthy eating habits will take the weight off and keep it off.