Dieting

Dieting can be a catch 22. While a diet can help us lose those unwanted pounds, it can also create a yo-yo effect that causes our weight to swing from high to low and back again. The swing in weight is because maintaining a particular diet may not be easy nor realistic for us. A diet is also vastly different than a lifestyle, too. The word diet implies something with a beginning and an end, whereas a lifestyle denotes a way of living. Something ongoing versus finite. So beware of the diet if losing weight is your goal, because if you are going to go through all the effort you may as well be able to sustain it, right?

A recent article in The Cincinnati Enquirer (1/10/16) shed light on the inherent problem with dieting as a solution to weight loss. The article featured a notable magician, Penn Jillette, who lost more than 100 pounds in roughly 3 months. This in itself is almost unheard of, to lose that much weight in such little time. But it’s incredibly tempting to believe that it can also happen for us as well. And while it just might, the question we need to ask ourselves is this, “Can we sustain the diet that we use to lose the weight once we reach our target?” This could mean for the rest of your life. If the answer is no, then it’s time to look at weight loss a little differently.

Losing weight takes time, just as it took time to add it. It also requires a different mindset, too. The new mindset involves looking at how you live your life, or your lifestyle. With a diet, you may or may not change your lifestyle for the rest of your life. You might just see this as a temporary solution to your weight loss. Temporary is not a solution. Temporary can mean that things may go back to how they were before. A change in lifestyle implies a more permanent solution to a situation. It means changing habits, changing activities, changing routines. It revolves around change. Only when we change ourselves do we see results truly happen. Results that last a lifetime.