To Diet Or Not To Diet ?

I was talking with someone on Facebook last night about whether to diet or not!

Now normally when you need something then you just go and do it, so if you needed to fix a broken window then you would just put a new piece of glass in and job done.

But being overweight is different, because when you get slim there is no guarantee you will stay there. In fact, we all know that statistically you are more likely to end up bigger in the long term from dieting constantly.

Loads of research shows that, at best, 98% of people regain all their lost weight within 18 months. I was reading a study in the summer that says 75% of people are actually bigger 18 months later than they were before they started the diet.

So if you go with the statistics then the best thing to do is not to diet!

But the problem of course with that is that if you are overweight and someone says don't diet then you just look confused and say 'How will I get slim if I don't diet?'

So it's a catch 22, diet and get bigger in the long term, don't diet and stay big!

And it is this problem that most dieters battle with, they go from deciding to never diet again to going back on a diet and then back to never dieting again and then back on another fad diet.

I did it for 20 years!

And we all go in search of the magic cure and the secret to being like our slim friends who can eat whatever they want and still look amazing in their size 8 jeans.

Now my advice for anyone who really wants to be slim long term is to do it through healthy eating, cutting back a bit, getting more active and generally rebalancing their calorie intake...

But that's not very exciting and we live in a society of quick results, we all want to see the scales drop today and not over the next year or two!

The fact I dropped 160 pounds in 20 weeks was what I wanted. I didn't want to reduce weight over months, I wanted it within minutes, and if we don't get the results then the diet has failed (as have we) and we go in search of the next miracle.

But real results come from new behaviours and stopping old behaviours, it comes from stopping pulling the trigger on why you eat, it means dealing with your emotional baggage, it means stop beating yourself up and be nice to yourself.

You see the issue isn't whether to diet or not, the real issue is why do you eat too many calories? Because as soon as you are honest with yourself and the true reasons you got big in the first place and why you still use food or drink as an emotional sticky plaster then go and pick any safe diet and get slim and then do something far more interesting.

The miracle is in you, not some diet! Between now and Christmas you have loads of time to trim and slim down and tone up, loads of time to go exercising and toning, loads of time to achieve some amazing results. Just depends how important it is to you to go and do it.