It's not What you eat that really counts!

When it is cold outside, do you fancy hot chocolate, cakes and pies? When it is hot and sunny, do you crave ice cream and sugary drinks with plenty of ice? No matter what season it is, there will always be something to tempt you. Whether it is Thanksgiving or Christmas and you feel "obliged" to eat all that food or whether it is Valentine's Day and you just "have to" eat all those chocolates. Well, go ahead.

Of course for good health it is better to eat a nutritionally balanced variety of foods. But for weight purposes nothing should be banned. There are 200 calories in 0.8 ounces of fried bacon. There are also 200 calories in 1.2 pounds of broccoli. The question is this - which would you prefer to eat? Eat that. As far as weight gain or loss is concerned is it truly you're your choice.

To think that what you eat is what causes you to become overweight is downright silly. Yes many intelligent people suggest that to lose weight you need to eat the broccoli and stay away from the bacon but they are mixing issues. Since being overweight is bad for your health most people mix that up with healthy eating thinking that eating healthy type foods will help you lose weight while eating unhealthy foods will make you overweight. They are two different issues.

The thing is as far as weight gain and loss is concerned, it's not what you eat that is important, its how much of it you eat that matters. Have a look in your local restaurants at the customers. Have a look in the Japanese restaurant, the Chinese eat-all-you-want buffet, the fast food joint and the ice cream parlour. What do you see? It is safe to assume that the customers will be the same size. Perhaps a third of them are underweight or of normal weight, another third are overweight and the last third are medically obese. That is what the general population of America is like, no matter which restaurant window you are peeking through!

Normal weight people, overweight people and obese people eat pretty much the same thing. About 30% of vegetarians are obese, around 30% are overweight and the other 40% are of normal weight. Vegetarians are not immune to obesity. They might eat more healthily than non-vegetarians (or they might not) but they suffer from obesity too because of the amount they consume. An inch think serving of cream cheese on a large bagel with five teaspoons of honey in a bowl of oatmeal, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and three spoons of sugar in a cup of coffee for breakfast and the calories really add up!

All this shows there is no right diet for weight control. It is a question of how much you eat. Some people will need to eat more than others if they are larger or have an active lifestyle. It doesn't matter how much they need to eat, you need to eat for your body and lifestyle. Remember, health is a very different issue. What you eat does have an effect on your health, but we are not talking about that here. Here we are only talking about gaining and losing weight.

Use your own logic to see if this makes sense. If a bad diet of burgers, fries and sodas (lots of fats and sugar) makes people obese then everyone who eats burgers, fries and sodas will be obese. Also, that suggests that all obese eat a bad diet (burgers, fries and sodas). But as pointed out above, many vegetarians are overweight and obese. Even if you run across a situation like that, such as all of the kids in a family eat the same foods, it does not mean that the reason they are all overweight is because of the type of food. That is like saying that in a certain doctor's office all the pregnant people are women, and all of the women in the office are pregnant, therefore pregnancy is caused by being female. Wrong and wrong again.

The real issue is why are there thin, overweight and obese vegetarians and junk food junkies? The answer is that something is pushing them to eat too much of what ever it is that they eat.

They are being pushed by a compulsion to eat too much for their own bodies needs. They eat and snack when they are not physically hungry. They have a constant gnawing anxiety to eat that is a compulsion called the Food Monster. In order to lose weight, and keep it off they need to deal with that Food Monster compulsion which pushes them to eat.

To learn about the Food Monster compulsion read the book Taming Your Food Monster. It explains how the compulsion is developed, why it is not your fault, and what you can do about it.