On a diet!
I have been on a diet or another for as long as I can remember. I have tried Slim Fast, Weight Watchers, Atkins and Lighter Life, etc. I have lost at least twice my body weight over the years so why am I still overweight? There is a lot of nonsense written about dieting, weight loss and weight control. All those are based on eating or rather not eating a particular type of food, sachet or tin. As if by magic you would lose the weight and then go back to your old diet before. Some people even go to the extent of having their stomach stapled as a short cut (Fern Britton). Not sure I want to go that far! As mentioned in a previous post, I did manage to lose an awful lot of weight by starving myself for 12 weeks on sachets. But when I started to eat again, I piled the weight back on.
The biggest problem is not how to lose weight but to lose weight and keep the weight off. Staying slim in the long term is the difficult part of it and not what the fad diets are about.
There is no magic formula. If I want to lose weight and stay slim, I have to change what I eat and exercise or spend the calories I ingest. To lose weight, I must consider two questions:
Why am I overweight? If I didn’t know the answer to this question what are the chances that I will manage to loose this extra weight and keep it off? There are numerous reasons:
- not enough activity
- spend all day seating at a desk
- eat for comfort
- have seconds
- drink too much alcohol
- etc
Those are probably the most common factors leading to overweight for a majority of people. In practice it is often a combination of two or more of these and usually includes the first one.If and when I lose weight, what happens?
- Go back to eating as I did before the diet
- Continue the diet and lose too much weight
- Have a long term eating plan
Only the third answer is viable. A diet should be permanent, not just for a few days and months as I have to eat healthily everyday for the rest of my life. I must change my lifestyle by eating sensibly and exercising more. In the long term nothing else will work.
The problem is that the idea of being on a diet for the rest of my life depresses me into inaction. How to get out of this rut?
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