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Lose 10 minutes in
pounds!
No
matter how it’s written, it’s still wrong.
Diets
Don't Work!
By Chad Tackett
Many
Americans view a healthy lifestyle as something difficult
to attain--and something that's not much fun. Traditional
diets have taught us that to lose weight, we must count calories,
keep track of everything we eat, and deprive ourselves by
limiting the amount--and kinds--of foods we eat. Diets tell
us exactly what and how much food to eat, regardless of our
preferences and individual relationships with hunger and satiety.
Dieting can help us lose weight (fat, muscle, and water) in
the short term but is so unnatural and so unrealistic that
it can never become a lifestyle that we can live with, let
alone enjoy!
While
very few diets teach healthy low-fat shopping, cooking, and
dining-out strategies, many offer unrealistic recommendations
and encourage health-threatening restrictions. Even more important,
diets don't teach us the safest, most effective ways to exercise;
they don't teach us how to deal with our cravings and our
desires, or how to attend to our feelings of hunger and fullness.
Eventually, we become tired of the complexity, the hunger,
the lack of flavor, the lack of flexibility, the lack of energy,
and the feeling of deprivation. We quit our diets and gain
back the weight we've lost; sometimes we gain even more!
Each
time we go on another diet of deprivation, the weight becomes
more difficult to lose, and we become even more frustrated
and discouraged. Then we eat more and exercise less, causing
ourselves more frustration, discouragement, depression. Soon
we are in a vicious cycle. We begin to ask ourselves, "Why
bother?" We begin to blame ourselves for having no will
power when what we really need is clear, scientifically-based
information that will help us develop a healthier lifestyle
we can live with for the rest of our lives.
Deliberate
restriction of food intake in order to lose weight or to prevent
weight gain, known as dieting, is the path that millions of
people all over the world are taking in order to reach a desired
body weight or appearance. Preoccupation with body shape,
size, and weight creates an unhealthy lifestyle of emotional
and physical deprivation. Diets take control away from us.
Many
of us who diet get caught in a "yo-yo" cycle that
begins with low self-acceptance and results in structured
eating and living because we lack trust in our body and are
unwilling to listen and adhere to our body's signals of hunger
and fullness. On diets, we distrust and ignore internal signs
of appetite, hunger, and our need to be physically and psychologically
satisfied. Instead, we depend on diet plans, measured portions,
and a prescribed frequency for eating.
As
a result, many of us have lost the ability to eat in response
to our physical needs; we experience feelings of deprivation,
then binge, and finally terminate our "health" program.
This in turn leads to guilt, defeat, weight gain, low self-esteem,
and then we're back to the beginning of the yo-yo diet cycle.
Rather than making us feel better about ourselves, diets set
us up for failure and erode our self-esteem.
The
attitudes and practices acquired through years of dieting
are likely to result in a body weight and size obsession,
low self-esteem, poor nutrition and excessive or inadequate
exercise. Weight loss from following a rigid diet is usually
temporary. Most diets are too drastic to maintain; they are
unrealistic and unpleasant; they are physically and emotionally
stressful. And most of us just resume our old eating and activity
patterns. Diets control us; we are not
in control. People who try to live by diet lists and
rules learn little or nothing about proper nutrition and how
to enjoy their meals, physical activity, and a healthy lifestyle.
No one can realistically live in the diet mode for the rest
of their life, depriving themselves of the true pleasures
of healthy eating and activity.
This
article was provided by www.global-fitness.com
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