To lose weight, you need to eat tasty and satisfying: a nutritionist on two nutrition strategies that have a long-term effect and do not harm health

Every woman with the phrase “quick weight loss” will immediately remember several of the grandmother’s methods, as they say, “sitting on kefir”, or worse – on water. These and other methods were popular 20 years ago when there was little information about proper nutrition, but the myths about losing weight remain one of the most stubborn even now. Natalia Zubareva, Doctor of Preventive and Anti-Aging Medicine, talked about two nutritional strategies that will help you lose weight without harming your health.

Natalia Zubareva, Doctor of Preventive and Anti-aging Medicine, General Practitioner

Why do strict diets not work?

In fact, there are only two strategies for losing weight without harm to health and with lasting long-term effects: intermittent fasting and calorie counting.

Strict long-term restrictions are fraught with either a deterioration followed by gluttony and weight gain or harm to health. And not just to individual systems, but to the body as a whole. For example, the reproductive system immediately suffers from a lack of healthy fats in the diet, and a lack of vitamins and trace elements can contribute to the development of many pathologies.

To lose weight you need to eat delicious and satisfying, I always tell my patients about this, striving for harmony.

Everything else depends on your diet and the amount of food. At each meal, the body should receive proteins, fats and carbohydrates, and the calorie content of meals should correspond to the needs of a person, minus the portion necessary for weight loss.

calorie counting and intermittent fasting

In fact, you only need to cut calories by 20% to see results on the scale. Therefore, if you start counting calories, the weight usually drops immediately. However, it should not be forgotten that everything except water is food. Even juice and tea have calories.

Another method that works is intermittent fasting, with periods of abstinence from food: 20/4 or 18/6. We wrote more about it here. The most comfortable for most people is the 16/8 mode, meaning you don’t eat for 16 hours and you are allowed to eat for 8 hours during the day.

Intermittent fasting may be recommended for those who are just starting to lose weight and those who are overweight. But only as a temporary measure to enter the mode and get the first results. Then unfortunately the body adapts and the weight stops decreasing. But in this case, there is a method of counting calories and additional measures in the form of physical activity, normalization of sleep patterns and minimizing stress.