A friend of mine once lost 20 pounds in a month with this diet that involved eating less than 500 calories a day and drinking a lot of V8.
Was this diet a success? Sure, if that was the end of the story.
“Starved for a month, lost 20 pounds. The end.”
Except of course, that isn’t the end. This friend continued to live, and slowly, over the course of the next few weeks and months, regained that 20 pounds along with a few “bonus” pounds.
So if the goal was to temporarily lose 20 pounds and eventually end up a little heavier than before, it was a clear success.
However, I’m not sure any of us begin diet plans or workout programs intended to produce temporary results. As you begin 2017, and inevitably start to contemplate a method of getting in shape, I implore you: do not be tempted to go for the shortest, most extreme, and most difficult method. Anything you can only do for 30 or 90 days will only provide results that last, at best, twice that amount of time. Once you stop doing the thing, you end up right back where you started.
What does work? Meal planning and prepping.
If you want to lose weight, get fit, or improve your health, you must stop relying on the frozen food section of the grocery store, fast-food or other restaurants, and the pizza delivery guy.
Knowing how to plan, purchase, and prepare healthy meals is the number one thing you can do this year to set yourself up for weight loss success. Here’s why:
It gives you control.
One of the biggest problems Americans have is with portion control and high-calorie meals served at restaurants and fast-food joints. It is all too easy to order a sandwich and a salad and consume hundreds (even a thousand) calories without realizing and without consuming a large amount of food. Planning and preparing your own meals at home allows you to choose everything from ingredients to portion size to preference. This can easily trim hundreds of calories from your diet without leaving you starving or unsatisfied.
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