When I was working abroad in Japan for a year, the fad diet of the moment was the "banana diet." If you eat only a banana with a glass of room-temperature water for breakfast, then you can eat anything you want for lunch and dinner, not eat after 8PM, and be in bed by midnight.
Sounds rather ridiculous, right? The diet became so popular that bananas became nearly impossible to find in supermarkets, and Dole Japan was forced to increase their imports by 25%.
If you think the pressure to be thin is bad in America, it is even worse in Japan. Healthy and slender is not good enough when you can be rail-thin skinny. And the only way to become rail-thin skinny is to jump onto the next fad diet food trend of the moment–whether it is fermented soy beans, tomatoes, soy milk, or in the most recent case, bananas.
Diets do not work. The logic of a diet is warped right from the start. You change your eating intake until you lose enough weight, and when that is done, you can go back to your original dietary habits that gave you the undesirable weight to begin with, which… will continue to keep the weight off, or something like that. Right.
If you want to permanently stay at a healthy weight, don’t ever go on diets. Eliminate the word "diet" completely from your vocabulary and cover your ears the next time you hear another salespitch about a new diet fad.
Go on a healthy lifestyle make-over instead. It will benefit you for the rest of your life and it will make you stay at a healthy weight.
Plus, unlike most diet fads, healthy lifestyle make-overs actually operate on common sense. There are no leaps of faith involved when it comes to healthy lifestyle changes.
Lifestyle Makeover #1: Meditate. Why should you meditate? It will make you more mentally alert and know yourself more. Mental alertness and self-knowledge are your important allies in healthy weight loss. They will hone your self-BS detector when you try to fool yourself into thinking you are really hungry, or you will really only have a couple of chips instead of the whole bag. They will make you more mindful when you are just full enough to put down your fork and stop eating, as opposed to continuing until you are overstuffed to the point of wanting to throw up. Want to not gain unnecessary pounds? Meditate.
Lifestyle Makeover #2: Do Physical Activities That Are Actually Fun To You. Why do most people not exercise enough? Asides from believing in their own excuses, they probably have not yet found the physical activity that actually excites them. If weight lifting and running laps feels like a chore to you, then don’t do it. Do some physical activity on a regular basis that you actually think is cool and would look forward to doing more of. Some ideas are: yoga, tai-chi, rock-climbing, mountain biking, salsa dancing, kickboxing, rollerblading. Make it fun.
Lifestyle Makeover #3: Learn a Lot of Delicious Vegetable Recipes. Learn how to make fabulous, amazing vegetable-based recipes that will really make you want to eat your vegetables. It will save you money from going out to eat, and you will be able to eat them in healthy portions. The more you eat delicious vegetable-based dishes, the less inclined you will feel to eat artificial, processed foods.
Lifestyle Makeover #4: Hang Out with Healthier Friends. We are influenced more than we like to admit by the people we hang out with the most. Are your friends inspiring your healthy lifestyle changes or dragging you down with their self-pity dessert buffets? If your social circle belongs more in the latter than the former, consider joining some health-related social groups in your area, like a local biking group or a weekly vegetarian cooking class.
Lifestyle Makeover #5: Seriously, Just Drink More Water. Feeling a munchie attack? Drink a glass of water. Wallowing in self-pity about your weight? Drink a glass of water. Too tired to exercise? Drink a glass of water. Make it your default response to just about everything. You’d be surprised by how much it helps.
Great post Yumi.
Very out of the box truth, yet vitally important for weight loss. We are so use to hearing about magic cookies, etc…this is refreshing.
Thanks!
Renay
X
Excellent advice. Wish I had read it before downing a huge mug of coffee with stevia and a bowl of dry corn pops (neither of which I have more than once every six months or more). I haven't slept well in a few days and as a last resort, turned to artificial means. Have I done my yoga today? No. Have I eaten good foods? Not as much as I should have today.
#5 really hit me like a ton of bricks…hehe…Feeling a munchie attack? Wallowing in self-pity about your weight? Too tired to exercise? yes, to all of the above. So, I just went to the tap, poured and drank a 16 oz glass of water and sloshed back to the computer with no interest whatsoever in cookies or other things I don't really want or need. Thanks!!! I needed this!
Excellent post my dear!
I particularly like "Diets do not work. The logic of a diet is warped right from the start." …"If you want to permanently stay at a healthy weight, don't ever go on diets. Eliminate the word "diet" completely from your vocabulary…"
I've been saying the same thing for years. So I'm pleased to see there are others of the same mind out there.
The term "lose weight" should also be dropped from our vocabulary. Loss equals deprivation and of course, goes hand in hand with the cultural idea of dieting… as in die.
"Going on a diet" is a term rarely used, if ever, by Caribbean women. When a woman wants to drop some pounds – usually for a big event like a wedding – she says "I'm slimming" or "I want to slim down by x pounds." And the compliments usually go like this "girl, you're really slimming down…" etc.
Catherine
Have a perfect day!