madermouse's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Even Fad Diets Work!! SED Day #14 What an exciting comments section on my last entry! I think it�s funny when my readers get all heated about which diets work and which ones don�t. You all are very passionate about your diets!! LOL! The bottom line is this: Every diet plan works if you follow it. I mean EVERY diet! Yes � even fad diets work! I would guarantee that you will lose weight if you follow ANY diet to-the-letter. Atkins, Weight Watchers, The Ice Cream Diet, The CaveMan Diet, The McDougal Diet, Slimfast...etc..etc..etc... Heck, I had a friend who went on the beef jerky/Dr. Pepper diet and dropped like 30 pounds! And that�s the honest truth. However, not all diets are alike, nor are they created equal. Not all diets are healthy for your body. Not all diets are healthy for your mind (anorexia/bulimia). Some diets eliminate entire food groups while others eliminate certain types of calories depending on whether they come from carbs or fats or proteins from animals. Other diets require specific or complicated food combinations (macrobiotic diet and Sommersize), while some eliminate food altogether! (i.e. The MasterCleanse Diet) The true bottom line of any diet should be boiled down to a simple question. What diet can YOU stay on forever? And this is the pitfall where most of us stumble and end up yo-yoing back and forth between high and low weights. For me, I tried Atkins years ago when it first came out. I stayed on it faithfully for about two weeks. At the end of that time, I felt more lethargic and sickly than I�d ever felt. My kidneys also ached terribly. I went off the diet and felt better within a day or two. I also tried Atkins again last year, but this time I couldn�t stay on it for longer than two days. I also tried South Beach, Weight Watchers, The Zone and The Carb Addicts Diet in the past year and I failed all of them. I failed not because the diets are �BAD� diets, or because they don�t work. But because I couldn�t stay on them! What is the point of a diet that you cannot stay on? And if I could stay on it for awhile, what happens after I quit? You see, the whole point I was trying to make is that my SED plan is something I can live with � forever. It�s not too strict. It�s not too difficult....at least for now it�s not. And that�s the whole lesson I�ve learned through my long journey of dieting. I�ve finally come to the place where I know I have to do it this way � or not at all. I have to do something that I can stick with, forever. Because I�m living proof that I can starve myself and over-exercise and lose 120 pounds....but that wasn�t healthy for my head. I felt so deprived in the end. I felt so angry. And when the weight started coming back on, I felt like a total failure. I don�t want to feel like a failure again. I want to do something I can stick with for the rest of my life, until it becomes second nature to me. For many of you � perhaps Atkins feels this way or Weight Watchers or The Zone � maybe you feel like it�s second nature to you. Congratulations on finding what works for you!! But for me, those things do not work because I cannot stick with them in the long-term. SEE!!?!?! Whew. Anyway. The past two weeks on my SED plan, my mood has been steadily improving. (aside from a few bad days which we all have, right?) Part of this is because when my head hits the pillow at night, now I feel proud of myself. I feel like I�m taking healthy steps that will eventually lead me towards my goal. Instead of harboring those horrible compulsive, obsessive thoughts about dieting all the time, now I�m thinking about other things in my life. Like how I need to nurture my art and my writing and my flute... And instead of obsessing about what things I can/cannot eat, I�m just going through my day like a normal human being. I have set my own boundaries and they are actually livable!! Do you know how good this feels? For the first time in more than two years, I feel like I�m on the road to recovery. I feel like I�m changing the focus from weight loss, to just letting the small healthy things add up until I am a big culmination of those things. 5:44 p.m. - June 07, 2004 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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