I see that a member of parliament has written to various magazines asking them to basically cut out promoting “get thin quick” diet schemes; you know, the ones that promise to help you lose 7lbs in a week. What those of us who have tried some of these quick fixes (or even some slower ones that we didn’t keep to) will tell you is that the quicker it comes off the quicker it will go back on – with interest!
I’d just like to point out now that the ‘you’ used below is a theoretical/general you, and not aimed at anyone in particular.
The way that the word ‘diet’ is used these days conjures up images of deprivation and hunger, the thoughts of all those goodies you can no longer eat. It is usually this very thing (no more chocolate/booze/fried stuff) that sabotages good intentions. Then, once you have caved you berate yourself for being weak-willed and go bananas, stuffing yourself with all the forbidden foods. Then, feeling a total failure you give up. Also, ‘diet’ comes across as a temporary thing. You know, “on a diet”, “off a diet”. The word ‘diet’ refers to your whole eating regime, not just some temporary fad. Thus, the changes need to be permanent. Put simply, if what you are currently eating is causing you to carry excess pounds, is it really sensible to expect that same regime to keep you at your new, lower weight – you know, the one you have just put yourself through hell to achieve? Of course not. It wasn’t doing you any favours beforehand (otherwise you wouldn’t need to have shed that extra weight in the first place) and now that you have lost those pounds your body needs less calories to operate, so going back to the excesses of ‘before’ is just giving it even more calories to store as fat – hence the weight going back on with interest. That is why a lot of diets (maybe most) don’t work – people go back to their old habits and wonder why they pile on the pounds again.
Now, I have been doing SW for only a month and I can honestly say that I am rarely hungry (only when it’s nearly a meal time and I’m waiting for it to cook), nor am I deprived of ANY of the above ‘forbidden’. Nothing is off-limits on SW. NOTHING!!!!!!!!! The less nutritional choices (the chocolate/booze/fried/etc) carry a points value (Syns), but you are allowed up to 15 of those Syns per day. 250ml of dry white wine (one third of a bottle of Chablis, for example) is 8 Syns, leaving some wiggle room for a Muller Light flavoured yoghurt or two. I should point out that I am following the Extra Easy plan, and that Syn values vary according to which plan you choose to follow that day.
So, we all need to take a sensible, well-thought-out, approach to weight-loss, and not fall for these quick fixes that tend to make things worse in the long term.
Thank you for reading.
Leaving The Couch Behind 