Let me start by confessing something. I have not lost all the extra pounds I need to--I've lost 24 in 10 months, but I have more to go. I've accomplished this much, with another 15-20 to go but it was not as a result of some fad diet or structured deprivation program. I have since found a diet program that is very similar to what I decided to do.
The purpose of this article, however, is to discuss the reasons that we all tend to fall off, fail, or otherwise quit diets and find ourselves on a course to ever larger clothing sizes.
Why then, are we really in need of a diet? Is our current diet really bad? Do we really need to change our entire lives? Those questions illustrate the problem--at least part of it.
You may be an exception, but as a rule, our diets are horrible, and yes, indeed, we need a change of dietary course. But first we need to understand that the foods we eat are developed and marketed to create our culinary desire. We are what the food industry wants us to eat!
Let's take a look at the tactics the food industry uses to get us to indulge our appetites. While advertising and its prevalence is pretty obvious, what's not so obvious is the addictive nature of the ingredients used in prepared foods.
Most of the additives are bad, but the most notorious are the sugars, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup and sucrose. All of these make us think we are still hungry, while creating only fat--the body does not use these sugars for energy.
These sugars are used in practically everything we eat. Everything from soft drinks, we have been consuming in increasing quantities, to cereals, breads, and even the condiments we use on our meats. Thus, we are eating more and more sugars every year, adding pounds faster than we can get rid of them.
We are not just gaining weight, though. Along with the extra pounds, we are experiencing more and more diet and nutrition related illnesses. Heart disease, high blood pressure, insomnia, depression, allergies, and diabetes are all related to or directly linked to our diet and the amount of sugar we eat. The increase in these maladies closely mirrors the rise in the amount of these sugars used in our foods. Ironically, we are losing our health to the very things that we eat to maintain our health!
So how are we supposed to lose weight? If dieting, which we don't like to do anyway, is tedious as best, and not permanent; where do we turn? If the food industry is coercing us in the wrong direction with every advertisement, what do we do? And how did I lose my first 24 pounds?
Here's the gist of it: too many soft drinks, too much late night snacking, and too little paying attention to how much I was eating. Water, as boring as that can be, replaced the soft drinks, and the snacking wasn't too hard to quit--not easy, by any means, but not impossible--and the pastries I love so much... well, let's just say I haven't seen many lately.
It didn't take very long--only a couple of weeks--before I started to see promising results. From there I progressed to scrutinizing everything I bought, reducing as much refined sugar as possible. I'm not done yet, still a couple dozen pounds to go, but I have lost a couple of pants sizes.
You see, the very nature of diets makes them failure-prone. They are mostly restrictive of certain nutrition essentials, and the very idea of dieting is short-term, at best. Very few people start a diet with the idea that it's going to be a major life change and it's forever.
You may be able to stay on such a diet for a while or even a long time, but eventually one of two things will get you-either you will develop a medical complication that requires you to abandon your regimen, or you will simply give in to the cravings and feel like a failure.
And what happens when you "resume" your normal diet? You'll probably gain back everything you lost and some extra, because the food industry did not disappear while you were away. They are waiting, even begging for your return.
You can find additional information and a practical and easy to follow Diet Solution Program here. Other diet related articles and programs can be found at Les Leslie's nutrition website.
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