Fad diets vs the Sustainable lifestyle change
I kinda really don’t like the word diet. When I hear most people talking about diets they’re normally doing some weird “drink only juice” or eat only blueberries covered with chicken. If i had to define diet in my own words it would be something like “balanced combination of food to provide the appropriate nutrients for the body to thrive” – or something like that, not “Atkins” or “Weight Watchers”.
Many years ago, I went on one of these “fad diets” that my mother in law told me about. You know what – it worked. I lost 50 pounds very quickly – in like two months. I got down to 200 pounds and was all excited. The problem was I was eating tuna and chicken breast almost exclusively. I cut out carbs for the most part and ate less than 10 grams of fat per day. This was not a sustainable diet! Eventually I couldn’t eat tuna OR chicken anymore – and I went back up to 250lbs.
I’ve come to realize I think the secret to my success over the past year and a half has been that I changed my lifestyle in an extreme, yet sustainable way. Not only did I lose weight, I built exercise into my my daily life. I lost the weight slowly, I built my metabolism and strength/endurance. Now, exercise is as much a part of my life as eating.
I’ve been “stuck” at 180 lbs for a while now – though I still have a little weight to go I see this as a huge milestone. I’ve stopped eating in “weight loss mode” and I’m just eating what I now consider to be normal “diet”.
My ultimate goal is almost realized – maybe one more weight loss “push” and then I can just live…