Stop Dieting, Start Exercising!
It’s March.
Your New Year's resolutions have come and gone. You have tried again to lose weight, only to get frustrated and eat your way back to where you started. All around me, I hear people talk about "good" food and "bad" food, "fat" days and "fat" weeks. How often have you heard someone say, "I'm going to be really bad and have ….”?
Let me be candid with you for a minute. This kind of talk about food has got to stop. People have got to stop dieting, stop restricting, stop depriving themselves, and stop focusing on food! Shift your focus to activity and start exercising! The solution to our obesity is activity, not diet deprivation!
When in the past two months, however, have you heard "experts" say that the solution to America's obesity problem is lack of exercise? You will never hear the diet industry say it, because they are making money on your false beliefs that you lost and gained the last 20 pounds over and over.
Instead, you hear about a new operation, or a new "diet" or a new pill, Botox, or the latest plastic surgery. Please, forget about diets, and stop making the diet industry richer and yourself sicker - yes, mentally sick that is, because you have planted the wrong seed for thought.
True body weight is managed, not lost or gained. The management part takes place over a lifetime, not a short-term diet destined to make you fail once again. True weight management is a life-style change and, therefore, requires a change in the very thought process about food and the eating of it.
Diets are merely a temporary fix to make you feel good about the guilt that you may be feeling in the first place. Every diet, however, is a fallacy and includes some kind of deprivation of some foods for some period of time. Thus, we hear people talking about how many points they can have because they didn't have such and such for lunch, or they can only have this or that!
Enough I say! Let's cease the negative self-talk about food. Shift your focus!
What would happen if we shifted the focus to activity versus food? If we started the day with a positive affirmation to ourselves in the mirror instead of putting ourselves down?
I challenge you to start the day with a positive affirmation about your activity level. Here's one: simply say to yourself in the mirror, "I have all the energy I need to do the activities I must do today.” Or try this one about food: "I have all the nourishment I need to perform the activities I do today." Or here's one about body image: "I love my body,"- instead of loving some celebrity's body who we are not like physically.
Positive affirmations provide positive self-talk that helps us change our beliefs by having the end in mind. Our minds are so powerful that we program ourselves for success or failure by each thought that we think.
So it is with food, too. How about changing our minds about food and beginning to think about food as the wholesome nourishment that fuels and repairs our bodies and allows us to perform our physical activities with ease.
If positive affirmations do not work for you, then I suggest keeping a food journal for two weeks so that you can see what your eating habits are and what your relationship to food is. After two weeks of honest food journaling, go back and read what you ate. Note what time of day you ate and, if possible, try to recall the circumstances. If you find some patterns that you consider unhealthy, then implement a small change for two to four weeks. See how you do with a small change, and then gradually program yourself to add another.
Develop some positive statements about your new attitude toward food. Take small steps, and reward yourself for your successes with a nonfood related activity, or do something from your wish list.
Feel good about your food choices, yourself and your success. With this added self-confidence, you will be able to move forward with the next challenge. Simply set another small new goal and move on.
Lastly, and this will be tough, because there are so many people out there living the "diet" mentality, avoid people who have negative attitudes about themselves, their work, and a diet mentality. Simply refuse any negative thoughts about wholesome, nourishing food, and you are on your way!
Katie Blum-Katz helps busy people get fit. She has been a fitness professional since 1981, after she earned her M.A. in Dance & Dance Education, from New York University. She earned her B.A .in English and Theatre Arts in 1974 from Nazareth College. She is a dancer, teacher, personal trainer, and has been ACE, (American Council on Exercise) certified since 1988. She was Adjunct Faculty in Community Colleges in CA, TX, & MD. and became an ADDCA trained ADHD Coach in 2015. She coaches adults, teens and newly diagnosed persons with ADHD.