Dieting v/s Lifestyle Changes

The journey towards a healthier life may have varied approaches for different individuals depending on your personality, work routine, personal life and priorities.

A diet is a systemized, temporary and mostly aggressive food intake change whereas changing your lifestyle is an attempt to keep up that practice for an extended period of time, accompanied by some other consistent lifestyle changes. The approach towards dieting and lifestyle changes may be different but they mostly share a similar goal which is to stay healthy, fit and look good. Let’s look at both of them separately to decide which one is better for you.

Diet

• It’s a temporary approach with short-term goals and a specific target. The entire framework of a diet is to stay focused on a pre-designed meal plan till you achieve your goal.
• Following a healthy diet helps you to stay active, reduces the risk of chronic diseases and assures you of an improved physical shape.
• A healthy diet can help people who need immediate results or those with busy schedules, to lose weight through a well-directed food plan.

Lifestyle Changes

• It is a gradual process that takes a much longer time and patience, but gives you a permanent positive result with no short-term targets.
• Substituting the intake of unhealthy food with healthy alternatives as a lifestyle adaptation helps promote consistent good health and healthy practices that are easier to follow.
• Lifestyle changes, unlike dieting go beyond just food changes to modifying sleep patterns, managing stress levels and exercising regularly amongst others.

Like many other research reports now, a research analysis published by the University of California, L.A. reports that dieting is not beneficial in the long run. It can help you lose an average of 5 to 10 per cent of your body weight relatively fast, however, nearly 70 per cent of dieters regain that weight, if not more, once the regime is completed.

On the other hand, incorporating a healthy diet as part of your lifestyle, complimented with the appropriate exercise can help you maintain the weight loss for a lifetime.

According to a review published in the July edition of “The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition” most dieters successfully maintain their weight loss in the long term by changing their lifestyle and setting realistic goals instead of temporary quick fixes.

The choice of whether you want just short-term temporary benefits or long-lasting consistent gains remains in your hands.