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Diets Alone Don't Work!
Are you on a low-calorie diet? You may be doing your body more harm than good. Instead, try gradual, small changes in diet and physical activity that will greatly improve health and well-being. Many Americans view a healthy lifestyle as something difficult to attain--and something that's not much fun. Traditional diets have taught us that to lose weight, we must count calories, keep track of everything we eat, and deprive ourselves by limiting the amount--and kinds--of foods we eat.
Dieting can help us lose weight (including fat, muscle, and water) in the short term but in such an unnatural and unrealistic way that they can never become a lifestyle that we can live with, let alone enjoy!
Few Good Lessons
While very few diets teach healthy low-fat shopping, cooking, and dining-out strategies, many offer unrealistic recommendations and encourage health-threatening restrictions. Even more important, these diets don't teach us the safest, most effective ways to exercise; they don't teach us how to deal with our cravings and our desires, or how to attend to our feelings of hunger and fullness.
Eventually, we become tired, of the complexity, the hunger, the lack of flavor, the lack of flexibility, the lack of energy, and the feeling of deprivation. We quit the diets and gain back the weight we've lost. Sometimes we gain even more!
Vicious Cycle
Each time we go on another diet of deprivation, the weight becomes more difficult to lose, and we become even more frustrated and discouraged. Then we eat more and exercise less, causing ourselves more frustration, discouragement, and depression. Soon we are in a vicious cycle. Rather than making us feel better about ourselves, diets can set us up for failure and erode our self-esteem.
 We Don't Fail Diets; They Fail Us!
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