The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) have suggested the benefits of overweight people aiming for 3% weight loss, aided by attending slimming classes which could be provided by the NHS, and new NHS guidelines will advise people to lose a little bit of weight and keep it off for good.

This certainly makes a change to the quick fix diets we are constantly inundated with, often promoting heavily restricted diets when it comes to calorie intake or food groups alike. The major problem with these popular ‘crash’ diets is that they can have damaging effects on our health, and in addition to this, most people start regaining lost weight almost immediately post-diet. It’s evident that crash diets aren’t the answer to sustainable and healthy weight loss though as mentioned in one of our previous articles it is the average weight over time that really seems to help.

These new guidelines look to promote healthy lifelong change through a slight reduction in calorie intake and an increase in activity levels, rather than yo-yo dieting and cutting out important food groups. Whilst most diets expect dieters to lose a lot of weight in a short amount of time, this approach aims to stop disheartening individuals when weight loss doesn’t come as easily as it’s often made out to. By providing a focus on losing a little bit of weight and keeping it off, suddenly weight loss is made much more achievable.

Just a 3% reduction in weight could be beneficial to health, helping to reduce blood pressure and the risk of type 2 diabetes. Whilst, many people may still be classed as obese after a small 3% weight reduction, it seems that promoting a healthy lifestyle change is going to be the important factor in this scheme to help reduce weight long term.

Although we are constantly bombarded with diets like ‘drop a dress size in 4 weeks’, ‘lose fat fast’, and ‘cut the carbs’, more often than not there’s no quick fix when it comes to weight loss, especially without compromising our health. However the small changes we make to our daily habits can lead us to live a healthier lifestyle where we will start to see progressive changes over time, as well as being able to sustain them.

Overall, I think this is a much better and healthier approach to weight loss. As obesity is growing in prevalence worldwide, even a small amount of weight loss is a step in the right direction to improved health and wellbeing. The promotion of a healthy lifestyle through small and sustainable changes is of great importance in a generation where unhealthy living is on the rise.

Adie Blanchard – Researcher

Source

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-27586149