Everywhere we go and everywhere we look, we are constantly accosted by images of the perfect body.  In television, films, magazines, et cetera, ad nauseam, all we see are skinny “beautiful people,” and even though a lot of them end up in the tabloids with questions about eating disorders, they are still the archetypes to which society tells us we need to aspire.  This, in fact, does lead to a lot of eating disorders, and it leads to the creation of a lot of scams and fad diets. 

Fad diets can be extremely dangerous.  You may be able to lose weight fast, but you risk doing serious damage to your body, especially your central nervous system, your heart, your cardiovascular system, and your liver.  Crash diets can make you sick and they too can lead to eating disorders.  They promote the idea that eating less food than your body needs to function and exercising every day with a personal trainer at your side will give you a dream body.  What they neglect to tell you is that there is no way you can do that much exercise if you have not eaten, because you will not have the energy necessary to do so.  Your body needs food. Weightloss  (Gewichtsreduktion in German) isn’t achieved by starving.  Trying to do insane amounts of exercise when you do not have enough of the foods you need can do much more harm than good; you can even injure yourself.  Jumping right into an intensive exercise regime is not healthy either, because your body is going to crash if it is not used to that much activity.  There is nothing wrong with starting out doing 10 minutes of aerobics or cardiovascular exercises each day and gradually working your way up to a level with which you are comfortable.  Even a twenty minute walk and/or swim each day will burn tremendous amounts of calories and body fat.

Just as the right kind of exercise is important for losing weight the healthy way, so too is creating a healthy, nutritious diet.  That cannot be stressed enough.  You do not need to starve yourself, you simply need to learn about the right kinds of food to eat.  You also need to learn moderation, because portions are everything.  Generally, a fist sized portion of food is considered just right.

You can lose weight simply be subscribing to a good diet and exercise plan.  It may be a slow process, but slow and steady weight loss has been clinically proven to be better than the abrupt weight loss fad and crash diets give you – the weight you lose with those methods will always come back and generally with more weight to boot.