A health coach revealed red flags to look out for when it comes to New Year diets - including fads promising to change your life with one ingredient and unsustainable supplements.
Vanessa Sturman, 37, is a health and behaviour coach with 10 years experience and has warned dieters of fads to steer clear of.
In the first few days of January, she says many go about implementing their New Year's resolutions, but Vanessa claims more than 80 per cent of people who set them will fail.
She said this is down to people setting "unrealistic" goals for themselves and "misinformation" - especially when it comes to diets.
Vanessa also revealed some red flags to watch out for - including adverts promising to change your life with one key ingredient and wasting money on subscriptions that are not working.
To stick to a New Year's resolution, Vanessa says you must incorporate it into your every day life gradually instead of cutting out certain foods or food groups completely.
VANESSA'S TOP TIPS:
- Don't set unrealistic goals for yourself
- Incorporate your resolution into your everyday life gradually
VANESSA'S RED FLAGS:
- Products that promise to change everything with one item
- Expensive subscriptions that are giving you no benefit
- Diets that rely on willpower
- Ads that use the words detox, cleanses and reset
Vanessa Sturman, 37, is a health and behaviour coach with 10 years experience and has warned dieters of fads to steer clear of.
In the first few days of January, she says many go about implementing their New Year's resolutions, but Vanessa claims more than 80 per cent of people who set them will fail.
She said this is down to people setting "unrealistic" goals for themselves and "misinformation" - especially when it comes to diets.
Vanessa also revealed some red flags to watch out for - including adverts promising to change your life with one key ingredient and wasting money on subscriptions that are not working.
To stick to a New Year's resolution, Vanessa says you must incorporate it into your every day life gradually instead of cutting out certain foods or food groups completely.
VANESSA'S TOP TIPS:
- Don't set unrealistic goals for yourself
- Incorporate your resolution into your everyday life gradually
VANESSA'S RED FLAGS:
- Products that promise to change everything with one item
- Expensive subscriptions that are giving you no benefit
- Diets that rely on willpower
- Ads that use the words detox, cleanses and reset
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FunTranscript
00:00I help people eat their way to great performance and a healthy weight without ever dieting again
00:04with easy habits built around the busy lifestyle. Health kicks, detoxes, cleanses, new year, new me
00:11and this happens every year. Okay so there's something unsustainable going on with this.
00:16I'm here with Callum. Hi Callum. Hi I'm Callum. I am a plant-based nutritionist so I deal with
00:24predominantly you know plant-based people trying to help people become healthier through whole
00:27plant foods. So when people are worrying about exactly how many times should I eat a day there
00:33is not a number. It's going to depend on your lifestyle, what you're actually eating etc.
00:39It can change each day and they're not even just doing the basics of building in more fruit,
00:44more veg, more whole grains, getting movement into their day. Because even those small changes it's
00:49actually making a significant change to what may have been the dietary pattern before. There's a
00:54lot of people not feeling so great maybe because they feel they didn't achieve enough during 2024.
00:59They might have felt that overindulged at Christmas. A few days of overindulgence by the way will not
01:04kill you as well. People will try sell a secret formula or a secret you know supplement that's
01:09gonna that's gonna help you but if there's something out there that can give you these
01:13transformations in a matter of weeks let alone a month then it's either not real and it's not
01:19going to happen for you or if you can't give you those results it's not going to be in the
01:23healthiest way possible. It's going to be a quick fix result that's not going to be long lasting.
01:28And I also think that it's important to remember that we can get short-term results and feel good
01:35for a bit. Like we can you can kind of lose weight doing any diet as long as you're in a calorie
01:41deficit you might get some reduced cravings. Now that can literally be by putting more of these
01:48fiber-filled foods on your plate, balancing your plate better with more veggies, good carbs,
01:53some good fats, great source of protein. People might see relatively quick results in the sense
01:58that they go oh I now feel more full. Right you haven't suddenly transformed into a gladiator
02:04from from that one meal but some of those results the you know massively dropping weight which you
02:09might get you have to understand that's going to be unsustainable by doing it in such a short
02:15amount of time. And then it does actually become quite a big waste of time and energy and potentially
02:19damaging for the body because it could be harder for you to lose weight at that point. Your mental
02:25health may have really suffered during that time but we have to look at can I see myself doing this
02:30for the long term or it is a bit of a waste of time and energy and as we know we've been talking
02:35about a lot a waste of money because some of these programs can be very very expensive. You need to
02:39learn to invest in yourself, invest in your body and invest in the way that you want to feel and
02:45live and you don't want to invest in the worst results or the or the worst outcomes. Now this
02:53doesn't mean you have to go to the gym three hours a day at all and in fact that's another kind of
02:58myth. We can all we can all waste time whatever it is we have to just rearrange some of that time
03:02and that's where I think the discipline comes in. So some people and again this is another red flag
03:07people come to me and they say Vanessa I clearly have no willpower it's like well guess what I don't
03:11either if I had to starve myself I would have no willpower either. Another kind of red flag
03:16oh you're never allowed to have sugar again you know these sorts of things they do they do not
03:21work at all. Starting with these little changes that you can do every day that have a massive
03:26impact that stuff's really really important but that discipline comes in of saying okay
03:31I'm gonna make sure my freezer is stocked up with frozen berries. Cravings can be complicated but
03:36they can also sometimes it can be simple in the sense that you may not be eating enough or
03:41discipline could be some really simple behaviors like okay I don't eat a piece of cake when I'm
03:46really hungry I eat a balanced meal when I'm really hungry then if I really want the cake
03:51I have it after. What do we class as a balanced meal? For the majority of people a balanced meal
03:56would be half your plate like fruit like veggies and then having like a carb sauce and then a kind
04:01of protein sauce as well and that would consist of a balanced plate in my eyes. That's going to
04:05look different to everybody as well because everybody's got different eating habits if you're
04:08making those tiny swaps like as you say like air frying instead of deep frying that's going to be
04:13like a hundred times better. Can you give me 15 different diets for the new year to get skinny
04:24and lose weight for that for people with unused resolutions? And this is what I got like the first
04:30one was ketogenic diet. I think the keto diet is probably the most normal one here.
04:37Then we have the whole 30 which is a 30-day elimination diet where participants cut out
04:44sugar, alcohol, grains, legumes, dairy, processed foods to reset eating habits and identify potential
04:51food sensitivities. Processed food doesn't always mean bad. Also processed is different from ultra
04:57processed. A tin of tomatoes is processed. Tofu is processed. So it's thrown around a lot and I
05:03think there's a lot of issues with this. We've got to always look at the science as opposed to just
05:07applying a blanket rule like I only eat single ingredient foods. We have the low-fat diet which
05:13encourages eating zero fat in your diet. Please never do that anyone. We do need fat within the
05:19body. The average consumption for a toddler is 1,200 so if you're eating lower than a toddler
05:26and they know very little then we know there's going to be something going wrong.
05:31It's got to be about your happiness, sustainability, delicious food, fitting in with your life,
05:37your long-term health. Actually you are not going to get very far with your weight management if
05:42your only goal is to lose weight. Those first steps that are actually consistent so you can
05:48start getting results and people have had fantastic results from those in terms of their energy levels,
05:53weight management, reducing cravings over the long term. Not by magic,
05:57it's literally finding the things they can do really consistently.