Why We Put the "Die" in "Diet"

Dieting sucks.

There's no point in trying to deny it. It involves hunger, sweat (and the smell that comes with it), and tears. Toss in a little bit of blood, a whole lot of telling yourself "no," and that strange low-calorie substitute that can claim fame neither as butter nor as margarine... and you've got yourself a regular fun fest. Even this afternoon, it was really hard to go for that chicken salad when I wanted that mushroom burger. And I love ranch dressing. Fries, chicken, salad, pizza. You name it, I put ranch on it. Well, I did, anyway.

Let us all stand in a moment of silence as we respectfully mourn the passing of an age.

It's really easy to get caught up in all the things I can't have. Goodbye, chocolate. Au revoir, ice cream. Sayonnara, all things pastry. Helloooo, carrot sticks.

At least, that's how I always thought of it before, and I think that's a lot of the reason it failed. Now I confess, I've lost my first six pounds, and it hasn't been on my own. I decided to go through Weight Watchers. No, this isn't a plug -- unless someone from the company is willing to pay to make it one. (It's the student loans, they make me desperate.) What I like, though, is that it's making me do all the work, but educating me in how to do it. Because I finally realize a profound truth.

I am a nutrition and fitness moron.

It isn't a put-down, it's just a simple fact. So why try to lose weight on my own? It's like asking me to do surgery on someone when I only vaguely know what a scalpel is. It doesn't work, and it makes a mess. In the end, I suffer and get discouraged, thinking that I'm a failure when really I just didn't know what I was doing. This isn't to say that you should trust everything you read. (After all, what else made Atkins so successful but people just taking others at their word?) But I am succeeding thus far because I am taking the opportunity to educate myself and re-evaluate my ideas of what a diet really is. And my not-so-riveting conclusion is this: dieting sucks.

Thus I end exactly where I began, but here there's a new twist: dieting doesn't do any good! All it does is teach you that health is a hellish temporary state where you deny yourself everything you want in punishment for being fat until you shed the pounds -- at which point you stop and say "okay! Good enough!"

Which is sort of like cleaning your house once every five years when you can't take it anymore.

In my case, as I've said before, it requires a full-on perspective change. I don't think in terms of "I can't have this." If I do that, it becomes sort of like swearing to Tom Sawyer. He wanted to more and more when he wasn't allowed to. But when he could, it wasn't so important anymore. If I try to deny myself something, I'm setting myself up to splurge and overeat. Instead, I'm going for the "eat smart" approach. The one that says "if I'm craving ice cream, I can find something smart and measure out a half cup." (Dreyer's sugar-free slow-churned is fabulous, for example.) Or "I'm hungry. But if I don't eat, I'll overeat later. So I'll have something small and filling now. Like fruit." (The more water content something has, the more filling it is.) So I'm actually making changes that are positive for my body in the long run (as opposed to losing weight whatever it takes), and I'm a hell of a lot less moody doing it.

In fact... I actually feel good.