Fitness: Life Is One Damn Diet After Another

A common expression each and every one of us has said at one point or another in our lives is that we’re “going on a diet.” The phrase suggests that we will be "doing something different,"  like embarking on a short term vacation trip where there is a beginning and an end. We dream of the day we will reach our weight goal and how wonderful it will be when we don’t have to lead a life of painful deprivation. 

In the back of our minds, there is a comforting little tape playing, promising us that when our weight loss campaign is over, we’ll be able to stop counting calories, carbohydrates, or fats. We long for the day when we no longer have to clench our teeth as we refuse a favorite dish that always causes us to salivate in our sleep. We reach for the carrot and celery sticks without anticipation or enthusiasm while torturing ourselves with visions of the special treats we’ll enjoy when the diet is over. 

Allowing ourselves to think of a diet as a delineated, restricted period within our total life span is a sure avenue back to an unhealthy lifestyle. To have any hope of attaining permanent weight control, we must approach it as a lifelong effort,expanding our fitness levels and watching our calorie intake day after day, week after week, year after year. 

You feel your heart sinking in your chest. You think “If I have to live like this all the time, it’s just not worth it!” That little voice promises you that you are different. You can relax because now you know how to lose weight, you can do it anytime you want. Gain five pounds and you’ll go back on your diet and be back to goal in no time at all. But you won’t! You will go as far as putting on your golds gym tank top or cute yoga pants and somehow never make it to the gym. You will fall back into old snacking pattern while reassuring yourself that you will get back on your diet on Monday... no Tuesday... perhaps next week. 

Think back over your chequered weight history. We all believe that once our weight is down, it will be so easy to go on a short diet if we gain back a few pounds. It doesn’t work that way, though, does it? We start gaining a pound here and a pound there, but then there are some special events coming up and a diet would be so inconvenient. We don’t go back “on” our diet until we’ve gained enough weight to develop the self-disgust that warrants a new period of serious deprivation. 

We have become a full-fledged member of the yo-yo club, that vast majority of dieters who cannot keep the weight off for more than a few weeks. 

The reasons we go “on” and “off” diets are numerous: they are boring, depressing, and very uncomfortable. They set us apart from friends, family, and coworkers who continue to snack, to feast, and to celebrate. We resent how diets make us feel and how they impact our daily lives. 

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