Monday, December 6

The Diet Doesn’t Matter

When I use the word “diet,” I mean the food and beverages I eat daily.  However, when most people hear the word “diet,” they think of a set of restrictive rules around what you eat daily with the goal of losing weight.  I am not on a diet, but I discuss my diet regularly on this blog.
Still with me?
I watched an interview with this guy who purposefully built junk food into his daily diet, and managed to lose 15 pounds.  This is totally worth the watch!  He’s a nutritionist who wanted to start a debate around health, weight loss and how the kind of food we eat really affects our bodies.  He ate junk food, but only ate 1800 calories (keeping his physical activity the same).  As it turned out, he lost 15 pounds; his bad cholesterol went down and good cholesterol went up; his blood sugar level also went down.
“What’s this have to do with the holidays?” you ask.
We’re in the middle of the time of year where there is nothing but junk food or high caloric foods as far as the eye can see.   Comfort food and desserts and drinks!   The point is—if you’re really determined to not gain any weight over the holidays—you can still eat all of the foods you love.  If you’re watching your calories, you can literally eat your Christmas dinner and lose weight.  Just because you’re eating calorically dense foods, it doesn’t mean you will gain weight.
Now, you’re definitely not going to be able to eat much of those foods.  Twinkie Diet Guy did not sit down with a platter of Twinkies for every meal.  He probably got like one.  But I think we convince ourselves that there is nothing we can do about gaining weight through the holidays.  Our culture tells us that it’s normal, it’s expected.  But it’s not.  You are not helpless nor a victim to holiday weight gain.
Do you find yourself slipping into this mentality?  How do you think it affects your decisions?  How do you pull yourself out of that thinking?

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

I loved what you said about not being a victim to holiday weight gain. I started trying to lose weight over the summer and dropped from 220 to 203 and then just HOVERED. I still went to that gym, but it was only 3 days a week and I ate what I wanted. I knew I needed to make a change, but Halloween was coming, and then Thanksgiving! As I started to think about it I realized that for most of my life I the holidays have always been my MOST used excuse, and not just Christmas or Thanksgiving, I stooped so low as to use Valentines Day, my anniversary, or my birthday as an excuse. A holiday is ONE day, so even if you eat an ENTIRE cake on that day it shouldn't be an excuse for being lazy for the other 29+ days. In the first 11 days of this month I have lost 7 pounds!



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