Talk to me about dieting and metabolic rate,please!

[countessbabycham]

After years and years of yo yo dieting/fasting diets etc. I'm reading a lot lately about how that damages your metabolism and how to eat to boost your metabolic rate..However after falling hook line and sinker for so many diets how do I know whether to believe this?Is it just the latest fad or is it for real?Can you really boost your metabolism by eating breakfast and exercising more or is your metabolic rate largely genetic?Can you 'repair' the damage caused to your metabolism over the years or does your metabolism just return to its own natural rate once you finish a fad diet?
I'm just thinking that if every diet decreases your metabolism and makes weight gain easier,surely all models would be fat?I am very

What are your views?

Come on I need someone out there to persuade me its a load of crap!

I don't know whether you can repair the damage done tbh - but perhaps someone more savvy will come along shortly.

I do think that eating regularly, in balanced amounts and doing regular challenging exercise will definitely make a difference. You need to do both. Hard exercise will burn fat and build muscle (in a toning way - not some scary Jodie Marsh way). Muscle burns more calories than fat. You have therefore increased your metabolic rate. Going for a brisk walk, or dancing round the house whilst hoovering, and all the other deluded things I hear people allude to as effective exercise wont cut it. You need to be exerting yourself significantly both aerobically and with strenth/toning exercises. I can pretty much eat what I want (albeit I don't want to eat rubbish all the time) and I stay the same weight, and this is because of exercise.

Thanks notyummy

I kind of think though that surely I could do one last fad diet as they're so effective for me at losing weight and then work on repairing my metabolic rate afterwards to maintain it.......Or am I kidding myself?

There's obviously not that effective....or you wouldn't have put weight back on and be needing to lose it again. Sorry! You need to be thinking in terms of how you eat all the time, not just over a limited period of restricted eating, and then back to eating all the wrong things again.

What I would say is that I had a particularly social summer a couple of years ago and put on 4/5 pounds. I tried the Dukan (which argeuably is a fad diet) and lost the weight in 3 days. But what I then did was to was to try and incorporate some of the ways of eating into a long term strategy. So now I rarely eat bread, pasta or rice - if I do eat them then I measure out very small amount. I eat lots of salads with plenty of chicken or seafood, soups (without bread) etc. BUT, I do eat cheese (not huge amounts, but daily) and I have a piece of cake (a proper piece) everyday. So, if you really must lose the weight quickly, then by all means do so, but you need to appreciate that you will have to then maintain it by eating in a thoughtful and balanced way all the time.