When you think about dieting, dreams of quick fixes and short-term habit changes spring to mind. If you’re serious about your health, however, diets should never be quick or short-term. Discover five good reasons why diets shouldn’t be temporary and get some healthy tips for finding your perfect long-term diet plan.

Drastic Diets Put Your Body in Starvation Mode

It’s easy to assume that eating fewer calories while maintaining the same level of activity will prompt your body to burn that excess fat. In reality, when you go on a drastic diet and severely limit your calorie intake, your body goes into starvation mode. This can slow your metabolism, causing you to burn less energy, lose muscle, and put any weight loss on pause. In contrast, a healthy eating plan can help you lose weight slowly and steadily, without any starvation.

Restrictive Diets Can Compromise Your Nutritional Intake

Restrictive diets severely limit your calorie intake, which prevents you from getting essential nutrients. Without enough carbs, proteins, fats, and micro-nutrients, your body can’t function properly. Rather than compromising your nutritional intake, adopt a healthy eating plan that gives you the right balance of nutrients to meet your weight loss goals.

Quick-Fix Diets Discourage Lifelong Healthy Practices

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Quick-fix diets claim to offer results overnight or in a few days. In doing so, they discourage you from adopting healthy practices that keep you feeling and looking great for the rest of your life. In comparison, following a healthy diet and exercise plan with the LifeSum app encourages you to make nutritious meals and regular workouts a way of life.

Short-Term Diets Don’t Get to the Root of the Problem

If your bad eating habits have caused you to put on weight, the cause of those extra pounds might go beyond overeating. Going on a short-term diet might help you lose those extra pounds temporarily, but you’ll probably gain them back just as quickly if you don’t do some soul-searching. When you make long-term changes to your diet and exercise plan, you’ll be able to get to the root of the problem, determine why you’re overeating, and make healthy changes that stick.

Fad Diets Can Cause Unhealthy Eating Habits

Temporary diets won’t give you an adequate chance to examine your unhealthy eating habits, but fad diets can actually encourage dangerous patterns of consumption. If the diet you’re considering requires you to eliminate entire food groups or limit eating to once a day, it probably won’t help boost your health in the long term. Make a point of avoiding fad diets, and put your health first by finding a low-carb, high-protein, or even Mediterranean eating plan that works for you.

Temporary diets falsely promise immediate results, but in most cases, they only wreak havoc on your body, compromise your eating habits, and cause your energy levels to plummet. Instead, commit to a long-term diet and exercise plan, and look forward to building a strong body and a healthy mind.