Yes, you. You don’t need to diet. You may have some weight to lose. You may have some abs to tighten, some endurance to regain, some fitness goals to achieve. Dieting will not get you there.
You don’t need to diet. You need to make lifestyle changes.
I am disgusted with commercials, like the new NutriSystem one I saw last week, that exoll the virtues of this or that diet. Invariably, the bikini-clad woman on my TV went from 220 to 140 “while eating anything I wanted to.” NutriSystem apparently helped one woman who can’t live without chocolate to eat her chocolate by “separating the good carbs from the bad ones.” Marketers constantly sell this diet that helps you lose weight without changing what you eat, that pill that makes it easier to lose weight (they apparently have a cabbage soup pill now!) – and people buy it. We want fast-food weight loss, and that just doesn’t exist.
Here’s the good news: fitness isn’t about depriving yourself of the foods you like to eat, starving yourself or running a marathon a day. Fitness boils down to two things:
Be mindful of what you take in.
This of course includes the foods you eat, but goes beyond that – the TV you watch, the people you hang out with, the magazines you read, the music you listen to, how much sleep you get - everything you take in affects your fitness and choices you make.
Be mindful of what you exhibit.
Fitness isn’t just about exercise, it’s about all your actions, behavior and choices. Your angry reaction to the jerk who cut you off on the interstate produces adrenaline and cortizol, which affect how your body metabolizes calories. If you live from paycheck to paycheck, the stress creates feelings of defeat and being overwhelmed, which makes it harder to be mindful of your food intake and exercise. All your actions and reactions during the course of the day affect your fitness – being mindful of your choice to react angrily, your choice to be rushed all the time because you leave late – being mindful of all your choices is the first step to changing your lifestyle.
One of the most important lessons about weight loss I have learned recently – it’s not about losing the weight, it’s about living a fit lifestyle. If your goal is to lose weight, you will fail in the end – once you lose the weight, what’s your goal then? What is your motivation? People are motivated by positive change, not stagnance, so having a goal of “keeping the weight off” doesn’t work. Base your goals on maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and you’ve started following the most effective and healthiest “diet” available.
