Dieting doesn’t work. Not Atkins, not South Beach, not Slim Fast, not Weight Watchers, not the Cabbage Soup Diet, not the Juice Fast diet, not the Zone Diet. Diet books that promise life-changing results lie. Magazines and commercials that preach the benefits of cutting out meat, carbs, and sugar are a joke. Packaged meal-replacement shakes and energy bars are processed, chemical junk. They won’t make you thin. They have no nutritional value. They will do more harm than good.
Everyone is built differently. We come from different backgrounds, and we grew up with different meal schedules. Some people like red meat, others don’t. Some people like to exercise everyday, others don’t. Are the red-meat-eating non-exercising people doomed? No. Because maybe they balance their red meat consumption with lots of vegetables and fruits. Maybe they have a job that keeps them active. Are the avid-runners and vegetarians guaranteed to live longer? Not necessarily. Because maybe they eat nothing but junk food and processed food, and their habitual exercising eliminates any social time.
You want to be thinner? You want to finally lose that freshman 15 and keep if off for good? Don’t go to the bookstore searching for the latest diet trend, because it won’t work. In fact, it could make the problem worse. Diets are restricting, uncomfortable, and harmful to your health. Your body is not built to run on 1200 daily calories worth of diet bars, shakes and frozen entrees. If you like eating sweets, trying to cut them out of your diet cold turkey is only going to make you crave them more. And who really likes eating a salad every day for lunch?
Get real. Dieting doesn’t work. What works is self-control and discipline, balanced with indulgences and pleasure. It is a fact that eating a smaller serving of something considered “bad”, like a piece of pizza or a small order of French fries, will add up to fewer calories than a bag-full of “fat-free” cookies, several bowls of Special K, and protein shakes—which will you leave you unsatisfied and craving more to eat.
Instead of “dieting”, change your way of thinking about food. There is no such thing as “good” or “bad” food. Moderation is the key. It would be better to eat a small cup of ice cream if that’s what you are really craving than a large cup of frozen yogurt that you don’t really want. Eat what you want, what you like, what you crave, because then you are less likely to graze later.
For more information about changing your way of thinking, I highly recommend Bethenny Frankel’s book, Naturally Thin.
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Wake Forest chapter.