Most if not all of us have been on a diet at one time or another. The key word being "been". Meaning you are not on a diet NOW. There is a reason for this. Most people go on a diet for a quick fix. We want to lose weigh NOW and fast. We also know that to go "on" an diet, means we will eventually go "off " a diet, which inherently will set us up for failure. However, people continue to go on diets and lose weight and then gain it back, and usually end up gaining more than they started with. Wow! There you have that yo-yo syndrome. Losing and gaining weight over and over again.
Let's look at why this happens. Well the number one reason is that people need to make a commitment to something if it is to become permanent. That said, the commitment to a diet is too difficult becuase it is too restrictive. If it is too restrictive, you feel deprived and you will "cheat"...once you have cheated then you seem to cheat again and again, thus you will fail, and eventually go off your diet. The next reason we fail, is because our goals are unrealistic. Most people feel that when we diet our goal is become "thin", sometimes we want to be "skinny". Using words like these also set us up to fail. When we lose weight we need to understand that our goal should be to get "healthy" or "fit", and if we incorporate that into our strategy, we have set our ideals on health and not weight loss. When getting fit, we will try to do things to reduce calories, and in addition find ways to get active. I say active over the word exercise because many people despise exercising. Getting active is nothing more than moving your body. Getting off that couch or chair and doing something to keep your mind off of food and your body burning fat. This can be as simple as walking, climbing stairs, or doing an activity that you enjoy doing. Most importantly, the third reason we fail is because if our bodies eat too few calories, our bodies think that we are starving. We will lose weight, but we will be losing muscle mass because our bodies store fat when we are starving. Muscle mass is the very thing that burns calories and makes us strong and fit. It also makes our metabolism work better and thus burn calories faster. So if we are deficient in muscle mass, then our metabolism slows down, and when we go off our diet, we are left with nothing but fat and a slow metabolism, causing us to gain weight even faster than before. In addition, fat looks larger than muscle, so the fat we add to our fat, makes us look fatter than when we started our diet.
The solution? Kick the scale habit and get out of game of losing pounds! You want to lose inches! You want to build lean muscle mass and get fit and lean and healthy. The weight will come off , but you can't starve. You need to start incorporating healthy foods into the way you eat and stop eating the junk. All of this is what people refer to as a lifestyle change. I like to look at it as a mindshift. It is thinking about food and activity in a different way. It is something you need to do everyday, and if you have a "bad" day, tomorrow is another day, no worries!
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