The Slimming Pool Weight Loss Blog: Hey, I was Eating That!
Sunday, June 10, 2007
One-Size Fits All Diets Don't Work
Learn to incorporate healthier eating habits into your daily life, rather than trying to eat according to someone else's plan. Even if you can stay on a strict diet, what's the sense when you finally quit the diet and just gain the weight right back?
There is no One-Size Fits All Diet. Why do they serve a 5 foot, 120 pound woman the same plate of food as a 6 foot, 215 pound man? Why do they suggest the same 1200 calorie diet for an active woman and a sedentary one? It makes no sense -- better to create a diet plan that works for you based on what you usually do (activity wise), your age, size, and other health factors.
The Day You Quit the Diet is the Day You Decide to Gain Weight
Usually it's the day you choose to eat something off plan that tosses the plan right out the window. This is why the diet plan won't work long-term. If you don't learn how to eat what you love responsibly, or you try to avoid the foods you love entirely, you'll obviously not be able to stick with it for long.
Far better to learn how to eat within your usual lifestyle and create new habits that you then can live with, so even though it's summer and there are weekend picnics and lots of those "special occasions" to indulge. It's okay if you overeat today because you just get back to your new usual habits tomorrow. That's how you can lose the weight and maintain your loss from now on.
Turn it around; eat a reasonable diet the majority of the time and indulge once in awhile instead of the other way around.
If you want a treat, have a treat, and no, it's not a treat if you eat it every day. That's a habit. Work on the habits, one at a time until you turn them back into the treat they once were.
