Occasionally these diets can be fun and bring you closer to other overweight people, especially if you have to give up an hour of your time every week to sit and listen to others about their weight-loss and the "science" behind it.
I remember once when I was at Uni, a close friend and I went to Weight Watchers together. One week we were dreading it, because we'd been to a party the night before, polished off a whole chocolate cake between us and quite a few bottles of wine. We both weighed in about 2lbs less than the previous week! Eh? How does that work? anyway, our teacher was so pleased, she had completely ignored what we told her about the party and made us the examples of good students that week. We paid her about £5 for the compliment.
Weightwatchers annual profit this year was $48million, actually down on last year but still a hefty old business to be part of!
So, I hear you ask. If diets are cons why is Weightwatchers doing so well? Exactly I scream excitedly down your ear, they are doing so well because YOU KEEP GOING BACK TO THEM.
Think about it. You get on the scales one morning and think, oh i'm fat and therefore i'm sad and unacceptable in society. I must do something about this! So you look at what the latest fad is, buy some magic "vitamins" from Amazon or Ebay, Acai berries will make me lose weight immediately. Wrong sort of pounds I'm afraid. For what you get you will lose more £ then Lbs (good source of vitamins though, as with most berries)
So then you go back to good old trustworthy Weightwatchers or Slimming World. They put you on a programme that means you can't stray or mix and match your diets, you MUST buy their products because otherwise you'll spend half your day calculating points that they won't actually tell you how to calculate. You save points for your glass of wine with your dinner, or sacrifice dinner for a few glasses of wine down the pub, OR you sacrifice going out with all your friends because calculating the points in a restaurant or pub is far too confusing.
Straight away you are obsessing with food; what you're allowed, what you're not allowed. What the person sitting next to you on the train is eating; what your children are eating; everything on every aisle in the Supermarket. OH MY GOD EVERYWHERE I LOOK THERE IS FOOD AND I'M NOT ALLOWED IT! THEREFORE I WANT IT NOW NOW NOW NOW!!!!!!!
And the more you think about food, the more you beat yourself up about until BOOM. You're on your own in the car, house, office wherever and you have a couple of £'s on you and you hit the shop, and that share bag of Galaxy Bites, or that whole Cheesecake, large jar of Nutella and Family size pizza becomes YOURS and YOURS ALONE. Up yours Weightwatchers, I'll diet again tomorrow because I've ruined today! Then you weigh yourself, get depressed. You've "ruined" all your hard work of denying yourself the things that you like.... and thus continues weight loss programmes. Tomorrow comes, but those forbidden foods are still calling you, and you will eventually crave and give in, put on all the weight you loss and start all over again! Good luck with that!
Ask yourself this, is life meant to be fun or a punishment? Is having a social life a good thing or a crime?
I've been there myself and done all of the above diets numerous times. Now I'm not on a diet. My latest plan is called
I LOVE MYSELF. Its not pretentious, because you're not forcing it on others. Its free (apart from the two new dresses I bought myself the other week because I wanted to treat myself).
I went to visit an amazing life coach/weight management coach - Jacqueline Hurst NLP https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jacqueline-Hurst-NLP/151768384894843?fref=ts
She gave me the slap round the face I needed to wake up and realise life is passing by very quickly. (please note, she did not actually slap me round the face or physically assault me in any way at all) and after one session I stopped being on a diet.
Now, I live a normal life like all of those other people who don't diet - I eat when I am hungry, I stop when I am full. I can eat whatever the hell I like. Because I can eat WHATEVER I like, I don't need to buy share bags of chocolate, because they are there sitting in the shop waiting for the day when I feel like a large amount of chocolate. At the moment, I don't feel like it because I can! I've not stopped eating chocolate, don't get me wrong, but I will eat a bit, and put the rest aside for another time.
As you know I LOVE baking cakes. I've stopped eating all the cake mixture from the bowl and spatula because its always going to be there, and I'm usually not hungry when I'm baking.
I've stopped eating my children's leftovers and what they drop onto the floor (I tried to use this as a great excuse for eating their food when I first went to see Jacqueline). I told Jacqueline that I HATE waste, and would rather see good food go in my tummy than the bin. Simple response from Jacqui was "What is the difference between your tummy and the bin? The bin doesn't put on weight, but your tummy does, and is just a big bin anyway!" That was one of the biggest realisations that I've not forgotten. You and a bin and your bin is a bin, you choose where to put the waste.
I'm a much happier person in myself, and because of that I go out more, I buy new clothes but also I enjoy exercising (Got the bike in front of the telly, its my new couch).
When I go to friends' houses for a coffee and they get the biscuits out, its not a talking point any more. Its just a form of sustenance should I be hungry. If i'm not hungry I won't have a biscuit. I can walk past a bakery and not drool. I can look in the window at all the yummy pastries and cakes and think, which one would I like? Actually, I'm not hungry right now, if I'm hungry after lunch I'll come back and get one. Oh but I had such a lovely big soup for lunch that I'm full up and don't want one after all! Of course, there are times that I do want the cake and the chocolate and I have the cake and the chocolates and then I'll have my dinner in the evening, my breakfast the following morning, my lunch snacks and whatever else I want if I'm hungry.
For breakfast this morning I made myself quite a large bowl of fruit 'n' fibre because I always have a large bowl of cereal. Whilst eating it, I started to feel full, there were probably two spoonfuls left. They got binned!
When starting the whole process of loving yourself and doing what you want, it might be daunting to think that you're only going to want the naughty things. But go with it, have the naughty things, you'll soon realise that actually you're done with those and you'd rather a lovely juicy apple than a dozen bourbon biscuits, and when you get to that stage the feeling is awesome. Put the two together and see which one you take!
Finally, on the note of diets, especially for my Mummy friends who have done such amazing things like GIVING BIRTH and giving up their bodies for their children, take a look at yourself in the mirror, take a look at your gorgeous children and how much they worship you. Your partner loves you enough to want to make children with you, your friends love you because you are fun and sociable and like a laugh and maybe a drink too. LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO WORRY ABOUT TRYING TO BE SOMETHING YOU ARE NOT. Most pictures in magazines/internet are all airbrushed. We are all too naturally beautiful to need or want to airbrush our facebook photos so embrace that in yourself. Put a picture of yourself on FB and see how many like you get for it!
To finish off, as we are going to friends for supper tonight, I made some cakes to take with. Not sure what they taste like yet, as I mentioned I've not eaten the cake mix but there are chocolate cakes for the kiddies and another batch of Earl Grey for the grown ups. Obviously all can be mixed and matched, but check out my decorations. I'm VERY proud of my latest work :)
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