What are the most common dieting mistakes?

What are the most common dieting mistakes?

Susan Silberstein & Marilyn Joyce (Health and Nutrition Educator & Heath Counselor) gives expert video advice on: What is the best diet for losing weight?; What are the most common dieting mistakes? and more...

The common mistakes that I find people making when they're trying to eat healthier are in cutting out a specific group of foods. I think the big one right now is carbohydrates. Everyone's got this bug about carbohydrates being bad for you instead of defining what high-quality carbohydrates are versus poor-quality carbohydrates. People will cut down to far too low a calorie level. What happens then is the body compensates for that by going into what we call starvation mode and the metabolism slows down to accommodate that lower calorie intake. What would be much more advisable is to have higher quality and a higher calorie level and then increase your activity level so that you're building muscle tissue to trim down instead of cutting your calories to the bone. Those are two of the most common ones. Another one that I see a lot is the increase in protein. People think if they eat a lot of protein they're going to lose a lot more weight. The fact of the matter is, they're probably going to become very toxic, because when the body breaks down protein it creates uric acid, which is a toxic element in the body that has to be removed or released. You can't efficiently do that if you're not getting enough of the fibre and other nutrients from other foods. You need a good, rounded diet in order to be healthy and to lose weight effectively.