Are you on a diet?

If yes then can I ask you why?

You might tell me that is obvious I am overweight and need to lose the excess weight. Ah! But wait have you ever been on a diet before?

I can imagine many of you saying yes I have been on and off diets for so long I can’t remember when I wasn’t on a diet.

How many times have you started a diet with really good intentions, and even managed to lose a few or maybe quite a lot of pounds and then what happens next? You suddenly stop exercising or watching what you eat and suddenly those pounds you lost are back with the vengeance and more beside. How many times have you lost the same weight over and over again?

How many different types of diets have you tried? There are the popular ones but there are so many fad diets I have lost count as to what is now available. Maybe you are sitting there smiling thinking about the time you did the cabbage soup diet or the grapefruit diet or anything else like that.

You know these might be good for a short time but who wants to live on grapefruit or cabbage soup?

The truth is DIETS DON’T WORK. If diets worked and you had followed them time and time again you would be thin. Think how many pounds you have lost during the course of your life, for some of you when you add them all up it is more than you weigh at the moment.

Diets don’t work because in the main you can’t sustain them. You go on holiday and you eat whatever is available and the pounds go on and suddenly you are discouraged and quit. Or you have a bad day which means you end up eating chips, donuts and chocolate while watching a film and all the time your self esteem drops lower and lower, in fact if it went any lower it was hit the opposite side of the world.

What you need is to decide to learn to eat in a proper manner. To realise that garbage in is garbage out. If you want burgers, fries and coke daily you are going to get fatter. If you know that you want to eat these once in awhile then go ahead it won’t hurt you. Maybe you downsize the fries and coke. If you know you are going to an eat all buffet, then don’t panic but think ahead. Eat smaller meals during the day, and then eat in the evening but no so much that you feel sick. Know your limitation and know when to stop.

It takes time and effort to know when to stop but it is possible to learn it.

There are so many rules around at the moment when it comes to dieting that so many people feel condemned when they think they have broken a rule.

If you know you can eat any food, any time you want, and all you need to do is control the amount you eat, then nothing is going to make you feel bad.

How many times have you said, “I failed with my diet today because I ate pizza and ice cream and cakes?” Imagine what it would be like if you were allowed those and then you would stop feeling like a failure.

You would find that many of the foods you are craving would no longer hold the attraction for you. When something is banned people want it. Put a wet paint sign by a bench in the park, and then watch how many people touch it to see if the bench is still wet. The more you stop yourself from eating a food the more you want it.

Make a decision today to stop dieting. That doesn’t mean you and not going to get healthy and lose weight, but you are no longer on a diet where there are so many forbidden foods. Nothing is disallowed. Who is the person who decided that certain foods were bad for you in the first place, maybe the person who wrote the diet? Look at some of the diets around and see one saying don’t eat meat another saying only eat meat, another saying no red foods another telling you to eat tomatoes. They are all in conflict, but if you want to lose weight, then the first important step is to stop being on a diet.

Learn about food, learn to love food, learn there is no such thing as good or bad food. The food isn’t bad it is you when you abuse it. Time to admit you are an abuser. Time to stop abusing food. The food did nothing to deserve it. When you buy food in the raw state there is nothing added to them to make them into bad foods, you do that when you cook them.

Make today the day when you decide to educate yourself and learn to love food, love yourself and love the fact that you are never having to go on another diet.