Traditional Diets Versus Fasting – Which Will Work For You?
- Brainz Magazine
- Aug 15, 2024
- 5 min read
Updated: Aug 21, 2024
Shelley DiAngelo is committed to helping reduce the cost of chronic disease and increase the quality and longevity of life from individuals to corporate America with using holistic health options. She specializes in obesity, type 2 diabetes, and internal health and anti-aging from a cellular perspective.
Struggling to choose between traditional diets and fasting for weight loss? Discover how each approach works, and find out which one might be the key to achieving your long-term health goals. Explore the benefits, challenges, and impact of weight management strategies to see what fits best into your lifestyle.
The importance of weight management
Weight loss is one of the primary reasons people come to me, and it's something I excel at. While other healthcare practitioners may shy away from helping them shed pounds, I embrace the challenge. Losing weight might be one of the most impactful changes made for long term health. It’s a process that, when done right, can yield quick results with relatively minimal effort, significantly improving overall well-being.
The advice conundrum
My passion for weight management didn’t happen overnight—it was born from years of working as a professional dancer and then in hospitals as a nurse where in both worlds, my focus was always on losing yet another pound. The constant quest to have an ideal body weight, coupled with the negative psychological messaging in these worlds consumed my thoughts.
Years later, as a certified diabetes educator and working with emotionally desperate type 2 diabetics who wanted and needed to lose weight, I knew the standard “eat less and exercise more” approach did not work. For them, it was not about having an ideal body, it was about how to help them get and stay healthy. The struggle was ongoing and very real.
The approach to managing diabetes is always the same; control the blood sugars, eat a healthy diet and exercise every day, which always seemed so futile year after year. So, compassionately, I listened to my patients and held their hands through their frustration while adding more medications to help keep them from having a heart attack due to high blood sugars and increased weight gain. This endless journey frustrated me, too. This very protocol was the culprit perpetuating the cycle in which we were all stuck.
The missing piece of information
Certainly, we know that the overweight and obese population know a thing or two about doing all the right things. So, what questions was I not asking beyond the poor advice? What was missing in the message? Yes, lowering blood sugars in the blood was important. Yes, eating a diet low in carbohydrates helped, and yes of course, daily exercise has many benefits. But what happens if the instructions you follow don't work?
I simply asked, “What do all my patients have in common besides high blood sugars, insulin resistance, or excess body fat”? It was inflammation and an abundance of accumulated waste products causing damage to every body system. The diabetes and traditional weight loss industries do not address the true damaging issues of systemic inflammation, cellular injury, and the emotional toll the obese state creates.
Wound healing at the cellular level now became my all-consuming direction. That’s when I found the science of fasting and I quickly saw that as soon as individuals learned the correct process, they lost weight, and their health issues began to disappear. Why? Because they were healing their bodies at a deeper level which all traditional diets do not do. With fasting, many conditions like infertility, diabetes, hypertension, and even skin problems like acne and psoriasis can begin to resolve once the excess weight is gone and people experience internal cellular healing.
The impact of weight loss
In just the first week after embarking on a fasting journey, it's possible to see a 6–7- pound drop. Over a month, some may lose up to 20 pounds or more, and within a year, shedding over 100 pounds is achievable. This kind of weight loss can profoundly affect your health, reducing your BMI, shrinking your waistline, and improving everything from blood sugar levels to sleep quality. Not to mention, it can significantly boost your self- esteem and self-image.
Related article: Intermittent Fasting for Women: Benefits and Risks
The challenge of maintaining weight loss
Weight loss is both simple and complex. It’s straightforward in that anyone can do it— most diets will help you lose weight in the short term simply from a calorie deficit standpoint. The challenge lies in sustaining those results when hunger and cravings creep back in and overwhelm one’s strongest willpower. So, too, do life’s demands, such as, social events, busy schedules, emotional stress, and more that often derail the best of intentions and throw people off their diet plan. Many diets are overly restrictive or impractical, leading to discouraging failure and eventual weight regain. The key is finding a sustainable plan that fits into your life and does away with gnawing hunger and food cravings.
An approach to effective weight loss
My approach to weight loss emphasizes knowledge about how your metabolic system works and the practicality of the plan. This does not mean I put you on a diet and tell you, “Good luck”. It means I walk with you through a transformative lifestyle change, empower you with understanding of what you have control over, and infuse sustainability for the rest of your life. You need to understand how your nutritional intake and the hours of fasting work synergistically and how to make this health practice flexible enough to adapt to your life. I teach clients to eat when they’re hungry, make smart choices, and how to navigate pitfalls that in the past led them astray. After working with me, one of my clients who is an educator, exclaimed, “Nurse Shelley! No one ever explained things to me the way you did. I can’t un-know this now!”
The right support for lasting results
Anyone can lose weight with the right guidance, a practical and easy-to-manage nutritional plan, and consistent support. Sticking with a program demands it must be flexible, simple, and sustainable – my mantra behind everything I teach. Designed to educate and empower you, my program helps you achieve your weight loss goals for good, ensuring you not only lose the weight but never have to go on a diet ever again.
Want more insight?
Simply text 720-948-5506 and we’ll have a short chat about your weight concerns and to see if you are a candidate for delving into this life-changing journey with fasting.
Shelley DiAngelo, Mile-Hydrate Mobile IV Therapy and Wellness
Shelley DiAngelo is committed to helping reduce the cost of chronic disease and increase the quality and longevity of life from individuals to corporate America with using holistic health options. She specializes in obesity, type 2 diabetes, and internal health and anti-aging from a cellular perspective. With her extensive professional background and many accolades garnered over the years for her substantial contributions to the enhancement and safety of patient care, she has a strong foundation from which to impart her experience as a speaker and educator.
