CURTIS BOVEE
STAFF WRITER

With summer right around the corner, losing weight to perfect your ‘beach body’ is perhaps a top priority. Sadly, too many people are unaware of healthy ways to lose weight and can inadvertently cause more harm than good.

With so many crash diets available on the market, it is hard not to get caught up with them. Unfortunately, they have proven to be ineffective.

“They don’t work and can be harmful to your health,” Lea Roberg-Chao, professor of Kinesiology here at CSUSM, said.

Many crash diets emphasize maintaining a 1,000 calorie diet or less, which certainly isn’t safe or effective.

The goal is to lose one to two pounds per week. “Rapid weight loss is mostly water loss and muscle loss.

“The key to losing weight is to look beyond going on a diet,” Laura de Ghetaldi, professor of Kinesiology at CSUSM, said.

One pound is equivalent to about 3,500 calories. Implementing a strategy to have a deficit of 500 calories per day would lose one pound per week on average. 500 calories per day is the difference between a salad and a cheeseburger with fries. Seems pretty easy, not to mention worthwhile, doesn’t it?

Imagine if you employed an exercise routine with your diet; the pounds would come off even easier. Ideally, this is the goal. Modifying only your diet might prove as an effective method for weight loss, but utilizing some type of aerobic activity will prove to be more effective.

“A healthy diet coupled with a healthy aerobic exercise program where one gets the heart rate up for 30 minutes per day, four days per week, will easily and safely lose one to two pounds per week,” de Ghetaldi said.

More importantly, crash diets work in opposite fashion of one’s goal to lose weight. “They slow down the body’s metabolic rate, causing the body to burn calories less efficiently,” de Ghetaldi said.

Keep these things in mind, and not only will you shed that 10-15 pounds by summer, but you will have created a healthy template that you can follow the rest of your life.