Whatever you do, don't diet--ever!

You want to drop some weight so you go on a diet--you and 90% of American women--and you start, like most people, on a Monday. The diet may work, meaning you lose weight, but eventually it all comes back, and often you gain a few extra pounds. You decide you want to lose weight again, so you go on another diet, and the cycle goes on and on.

Diets may be well intentioned but they have the wrong approach. They have you change too much overnight, going one day from living in ways that support excess weight to the next day eating like a bird. Because most diets involve a steep learning curve coupled with a major time commitment, you fall off the wagon, but even when you try to eat "normally" your body fights back and you gain weight. Then the next time you diet, the weight doesn't come off as easily as it had in the past, so you have to go to more extremes to see less effective results.

This post is the first of many anti-diet posts, as I believe dieting is the #1 reason why 66% of Americans, that's 2 out of 3 American people, are overweight and/or obese. I know it's incredibly tempting to jump on the latest diet bandwagon, especially when your mother/neighbor/co-worker/friend lost tons of weight on it, but you have to resist this urge. As you'll see in my upcoming posts, diets destroy our body's natural ability to lose weight, they harm us psychologically, and they chip away at our self worth and self esteem. And, at the risk of sounding glib, they just don't work.

So vow from today on, no matter what you do, DON'T DIET!