Newfound New Year’s dieters might find a little extra inspiration to put down the Ding Dongs and speed up the treadmill this week hidden within two lesser known weeklong holidays.
Diet Resolution Week, Jan. 1 to Jan. 7, and National Lose Weight/Feel Great Week, Jan. 1 to Jan. 8, both help to launch newly established diet and exercise plans for the seemingly most popular New Year’s resolution, the same resolution which, for many, never survives to see Groundhog Day: getting in shape.
A 2005 Weight Watcher’s study conducted by Harris Interactive found 45 percent of women resolved to lose weight in 2006. Of that 45 percent, almost 100 percent said they thought they would need some assistance to keep that resolution.
But some health professionals warn against the mass fixation on crash dieting.
“Diets don’t work,” said Janis Mena, registered dietician with UF’s GatorWell Health Promotion Services. “They create more problems than they help.”
Mena elaborated, saying many fad diets, such as the Atkins Diet, restrict certain food groups like carbohydrates that are essential to proper nutrition.
“Traditionally, when people go on a diet, they go off a diet,“ Mena said.
Instead, Mena advised, dieters should focus more on mindful eating and exercising rather than simply cutting calories or eliminating certain foods.
But according to a February 2009 Huffington Post article, cutting calories is “the only diet that works.”
The article cited a study conducted in part by Harvard School of Public Health, which encouraged 811 obese participants to cut their daily caloric intake by 750 calories.
The study found an average weight loss of nine pounds after only six months.
Mena offered slightly different advice for those who found themselves with a New Year’s resolution to shed a few pounds.
“It sounds so simple, but eating until you’re full and stopping when you are,” she said. “Whether it’s broccoli or M&M’s, put it down and come back to it when you’re hungry.”
In the end, Mena said she doesn’t like to use scales as a dieting tool; they encourage an abnormal fixation on weight instead of mindful eating, she said.
“Let your clothes be the judge,” Mena said, “not the scale.”
