I was working with someone yesterday who has been following a very popular diet for the past thirteen years. I have to say I was astonished as to be frank she was bigger now than she was when she started but she was still passionate that this was the diet for her.
I would question if I purchased some hay fever pills and still had streaming eyes ten years later that I would be buying the same pills but I was also in the trap of 'I'm big, I therefore need to diet and even though I know that I won't keep it off I have no other choice as I can't stay big'.
What was interesting to me though was her use of the words sins, treats, good food and bad food. I also used to follow this same diet (I did five years on it and was also heavier at the end than the start) and I used to live on the syns. Syns meant nice good! Syns was the good stuff and I was allocated 15 syns a day to have.
I would also be allowed loads of 'good' food and therefore I would eat huge portions believing that I was doing the right thing to get slim.
I remember one night going to a weigh in and being told that you could eat as many crab sticks as you liked and then going and buying a pack of 40 of them and eating the lot on the sofa...
But food is just food! It is all calories...if you eat 5000 calories a day of brocolli (good luck with that!) then you will put weight on, if you eat just one McDonalds big mac a day and nothing else then you will lose weight.
When though you talk about food in terms of being good, bad, a sin or a treat then you are bringing that food to life and attaching emotion to it, therefore in my opinion and what works for me so well is that I don't have any sins now, I don't have any treats now, I just have what I want and I enjoy it for what it is.
