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Showing posts with the label Diets

Why Most Diets Ultimately Fail...

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What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease. --Alexander Pope It is true that most diets fail, especially during the maintenance phase. Why do 93-95% of dieters regain most (and sometimes more) of their lost weight? I think the answer is pretty simple--dieters often sabotage their own efforts by making these common mistakes: --Eating too little food. Whenever we try starving ourselves, our bodies are programmed to seek out more food. Ultimately, biology will win the diet war, perhaps even resulting in a rebound effect, which is why so many failed dieters often gain more weight than they originally lost. Eat enough nutritious food and you will lose weight, perhaps not as fast as you would like, but a steady weight loss will be much easier to maintain. --Viewing "the diet" as a temporary nuisance. Not a good idea; in order to keep the weight off, you have to view your "diet" as a per

I LOVE to Eat...ooh la la

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Anyone who knows me well is aware of my love for food. At one point, I would eat anything that wasn't nailed down. Unfortunately, I looked like someone who was hoovering her food indiscriminately. Something had to be done--and fast. More alarming than just the way I looked, I felt like crap, and it was becoming obvious that my health was beginning to decline: insulin resistance, higher blood pressure, acid indigestion, achy feet and legs, breathlessness when doing simple walking or light tasks, low energy, intolerance to heat, etc. One day, I had a serious talk with myself, and I posed this question: how can I go on yet another restrictive diet, when dieting obviously doesn't work well for me, at least in the long run? Yet, how could I not? My health was at risk. It was showdown time. So, on January 3, 2011, after three and a half months of counting calories (an obsessive activity, I must say) on my own and keeping a food diary, I decided to rejoin Weight Watcher

Memoir Madness: Driven to Involuntary Commitment