Say No To Diets
and say “yes” to developing lifestyle habits now that will help save your time, money, health, and sanity.
Start saying “no” to diets. I want you to say “no” to diets.
Before you read this post, make sure you read my other post about The 90-10 Rule.
I think it’s important to start this entire post off by clarifying one MAJOR thing; I am not a fan of, nor do I believe in doing diets or dieting just because you want to lose weight. (If you are someone who does physique competitions and what-not, dieting is part of the choice you’ve made. Power to you! But you and I both know those last few weeks and days are no fun, and it’s not something that you follow 24/7, 365.) Diets are boring, bland, unhealthy, and unappealing to many of us.
In this post, I am going to share my five reasons why you should say “no” to diets and why diets and dieting are no good for you.
1. Diets are fads
Diets are typically fads that are created and overly exploited by the health and fitness industry, usually around a specific thing that is believed to be bad. Remember when you were supposed to eat low fat ? Fat was made out to be this evil monster of sorts, like the Creeper from this movie. Now, apparently all carbohydrates are like the Rancor living in the cellars beneath Jabba the Hutt’s palace, just waiting to consume your health and devour your good-looking body (I just saw the newest Star Wars trailer, so I thought I’d toss another movie reference in here. Ha). These diets are usually temporary changes that go away after the diet plan, and not lifestyle habit forming changes.
2. Diets are discouraging
Most of the time when someone decides he or she want to follow a diet and he starts dieting he thinks it’s something that will happen overnight and when it doesn’t. Let’s be real, the fat didn’t jump onto your bones overnight, it surely won’t just hop off within 24 hours. So what happens? He gets discouraged, thinking he will never be able to lose the weight, and he quits. Boom. Accepting temporary failure as full time defeat.
“Never stop just because you feel defeated. The journey to the other side is attainable only after great suffering.”
― Santosh Kalwar, Quote Me Everyday
3. Losing in the wrong ways
When you go on a diet and follow it to the end, there usually is a large loss. Good job, you achieved your weight loss goal! But have you considered what kind of loss you just encountered? Well, first of all, you’re eating less (diets are so restrictive) so your body may be suffering in ways such as chemical imbalances from the lack of micronutrients (read more about how chemical imbalances can affect your body here). Most of the time the only extreme losses that occur are due to muscle loss and water loss because the diets you follow are very depriving. Then, when you happen to finish the diet and you’ve hit your weight loss goals, since the changes were temporary and nothing was truly learned, most of the time you end up gaining those pounds right back, and they tend to be pounds of fat instead of pounds of metabolism boosting muscle. So you end up worse than when you had started! Ugh.
4. Bad taste
Most diet plans and programs created by companies or people restrict you to eating only their approved foods and supplements. You are made to purchase tons of frozen meals, eat cookies that are worth points on a point system, drink only lemon water juices or special teas, or just have you eating cardboard like “fresh” chicken breasts. No, thank you.
5. Fake food
The supplement industry tells you that you will shed pounds of fat by popping this $100 bottle of proprietary blended pills. Um, what? I didn’t know the FDA approved of magic ingredients in a bottle. Why not just put a genie in there and let us use 1 of our 3 wishes to banish excessive body fat forever?! Oh, and have you ever read the ingredient labels of those “no calorie” foods such as the ever growing, popular Calorie Free Pancake Syrup by Walden Farms?
But Matt, there are natural flavors in these foods, NATURAL flavors!
Look, if you want natural, eat things from nature. No, that doesn’t mean you should go out and eat tree bark. Just read those ingredient labels.
So how do you lose that muffin top that always finds its way over the brim of your cute jeans? How do you shed those few pounds around your stomach to start to reveal those awesome abs you’ve been developing in the gym?
Shakes? Magic pills? Special potions? Wonder wraps?
Nope.
You do it with your diet (not dieting).
By manipulating your macronutrients and paying close attention to what you eat, how you eat, and when you eat, you can achieve your weight loss or fat loss goals! Don’t believe me? Check out my 12 Week of Better Eating Journey by clicking this link. You can also listen to a podcast chat I had with professional natural body builder Henry Adell about how to eat right to achieve the kind of body you want (click here to listen to our chat).
How do you feel about diets? Leave comment below and let’s chat about it.
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