Limits vs. plans

If there´s one thing of which there won´t be a shortage anytime soon, it´s diet plans.
Every spring, magazines abound with those promises of losing ten pounds in five days, and the bookstores, too, have stacks of books on the neweset dietary fads on prominent display.
And yet, the number of obese people worldwide keeps rising, while there are studies that have found the long-time success rate of diets to be...almost zero.
Even though the number of people who have lost weight on one diet program or another is certainly a lot bigger than zero.
They just didn´t keep it off.
Been there, done that.
You find a plan, one that tells you exactly which foods you may eat, or one that gives you prepackaged and pre-portioned meals, or one where you ingest nothing but shakes made from a powdery substance that may contain all your body needs, but bears no resemblance to actual food.
You stick to that plan for a while. You lose weight.
Maybe you even reach your goal weight.
And then?
You find yourself in the same place you came from where food is concerned.
You still have the same idea of what to eat when not on a diet. You still have the same habits where choice and amounts of food are concerned. You still have the same oversized dinnerware that helped you to get fat, you still serve yourself the same portions you used to eat before the diet.
In short, you have learned nothing from the experience of losing weight, because, heck, it wasn´t you who lost the weight, it was somebody else´s plan losing the weight for you. And you still don´t know how to eat outside of that plan and not regain the weight. That box of chocolates, vat of ice-cream, or giant burger, are there for you to eat the same way you were used to eating before the diet. And sooner or later you will do what you were in the habit of doing, food-wise.
And gain it all back.
As I said, been there, done that.

Yesterday´s math exercise, for me, is also a means of getting off that not-so-merry-go-round.
You see, human beings do have one powerful enemy who also can be a powerful ally. It´s called habit.
The habits that got me fat are the enemy, and those that get me slim are my allies.
If I want to keep the weight off, I just have to throw out the fattening habits, right? Alas, as Mark Twain (I think it was him) pointed out, a bad habit can´t be evicted, it has to be coaxed down the stairs step by step.
Thus, if I wait for the end of a diet to start changing my habits, I will, on top of the uncertainty of what I may eat if I don´t want to regain, have to fight the pull of my old eating habits at full force, too.

Which is why I don´t call what I am doing a diet. It´s in fact a habit-changing programme.
You see, the same habits that would allow me to keep the weight off, will also enable me to lose it in the first place.
I´m doing my experimentation with new habits during the weight loss process, which allows me to find out now already what I have to avoid if I don´t want to regain.

What has, for me, worked best  is setting myself a caloric limit for the day (say, 1500 calories) and fill that up with nourishing food. And watch out for foods that cause instant regains and avoid these as often as possible.
Limits instead of complicated plans.
The advantage this has is that I am, right now, finding out which way I can eat for the rest of my life.
This is not a diet I´ll be going "off" someday. It´s for life.
Sounds tough?

I had a buddy at University who had been an elite paratrooper in the Army. So, definitely a fit guy, except he had a peanut allergy which was so severe that it had sent him to the ER several times already.
That guy was religious about avoiding anything with peanuts in it, even margarine made from peanut oil.
If he ingested any of that stuff by accident, it was back to the ER.
Can you guess he didn´t discuss with himself whether a little bit of peanut brittle would be okay? Or mourn the fact he couldn´t eat it?

If I want to keep the excess weight off for good, I must be as careful about keeping away from foods that make me regain., and also about portion sizes.
As simple as that.

And if I lose the excess weight by eating the way I would have to eat at goal already, the new habits will be firmly in place when I get there. Not somebody else´s plan that I can´t wait to get away from, but my own, road-tested, personalized set of successful habits.


Julia