5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Go On a Diet

For years I like many people made a New Year's resolution to lose weight and get healthier. The problem was that after a few weeks of being on a DIET I ended up reverting back to my old eating habits and I gained back the weight I lost.

Finally it hit me I didn't need to be on a diet, I needed to live my life. I needed to look at all the changes in my eating habits and getting more exercise not as a temporary fix but as a lifelong process. I still struggle with my eating habits but I have made great headway. I lost almost 60 pounds and have kept the weight off.

I still have a little way to go but I am working on it. This Hub was written about my point of view of a diet and it is not meant as a discouragement to those who are dieting and losing weight. Keep up the good fight because getting healthy will save you a lot of problems in the long run. I know because I am now dealing with poor food choices early in life.

Here are the five reasons i don't go on a diet.

The word 'diet' strikes fear in the hearts of many people. They can picture in their minds eating salads and diet foods for the rest of lives which creates an atmosphere of failure before the person even starts to 'diet'.

I was like everyone else whenever someone told me I needed to go on a diet I would see myself already failing and falling back into my old habits of eating. Dieting is a mental battles as much as it is a physical one. You have to set yourself up for success before you even start the whole process of losing weight.

The reason many people like me don't go a diet is because diets always feel so limited and confining. There are some good organizations out there like Weight Watchers who allow you to pick and choose what you eat based on a point system but for the most part people like me see diets as very limiting.

The key for me was to eliminate the word diet from my vocabulary and replace it with two words, 'Life Change' which allowed me to make small changes each week to my lifestyle in order to make the changes a habit. I allowed myself the freedom to have a treat now and then. In this way my eating were adjusted over time.

The third reason I don't say 'diet' is because each time I would start a diet one question always popped into my head, "What happens when the diet ends?" What happens after I've lost the weight I want to lose and need to increase my caloric intake?

In my mind before I even started the diet I would be worrying about what happened at the end of the diet. Now as I look more at my food choices as a life style change and not a diet I worry less about the end of my weight loss challenge and more about feeling healthy because I know the journey I am on will continue until the end.

Another reason I don't go on diets is because they are so stressful. You have to worry every day about how many calories go into you mouth and how much exercise you do in order to find some peace in the ever lowering numbers on the scale.

I found when I turned eating right into a lifestyle change and not a diet the worry over getting my numbers right seemed to melt away. I no longer worried about the scale because I found when I ate the right foods I lost weight. I also knew every once in a while I could eat something I liked without worrying about it upsetting the applecart. Getting healthy should not be stressful it should fit seamlessly your lifestyle.

The fifth reason I changed my view about diets was because it was hard to see diets as portable. You could eat the right foods at home but when you go out, it was a different story. Diets have the added stress of what you're going to do when you eat out at a friends house, a family gathering or restaurant. For a dieter any menu is a minefield of poor high calorie food choices.

When I changed my view of eating right from a 'diet' to a lifestyle change eating out became less of chore. I picked what I wanted to eat from the menu but only ate part of it and I always get the salad bar. In this way I didn't have to worry about eating out. Oh, and at family gatherings, I just choose small amounts of each item.

There you have it the five reasons I turned from diets and started to view my food choices in the sum total of what it meant for my health in long run. A diet to me seems to denote something temporary and with an end. However when you plant the seed of a lifestyle change in your mind the changes are seen as permanent and sustaining.

Like I said this idea worked for me. I have no idea if it will work for everyone. The key to any life style change is beginning with the right mindset. Therefore you need to examine the reasons why you got into the situation you're in now and seek out ways to rectify the problem.

I hope this Hub helps you, at least a little, on your journey to a healthier life.