Dieting’s Biggest Taboos and Mistakes

Knowledge is the answer to dealing with any problem and from there you will be able to determine whether or not your recipe for success is appropriate in order to achieve your goals of good health and fitness.  You will discover here as time goes on, that maintaining an exercise program, accompanied by a natural diet will comprise the main ingredients for your success.  But before we go on about how to fix the problem, we first need to fully understand what will not work.  Forgive me if some of these thoughts have already been posted on this site, and if so, a refresher may be helpful regardless.

Beginning a diet by fasting:  This practice is flat-out wrong and will not work.  It indicates a lack of basic knowledge about the problem.  Initially more water is lost than fat during the first week of dieting or fasting so that little benefit is achieved by the use of this self-abusive technique.

Skipping meals:  Healthy eating demands three, if not six, meals per day of varying caloric content spaced throughout our waking hours.  Skipping meals merely results in eating more calories when we do eat or eating when we should not, as during television viewing time.  On the other hand, television viewing should be kept to a minimum since it is one of the main causes contributing to obesity. 

Fad diets:  These come and go like the wind.  The grapefruit diet, the high carb diets, the high protein diets, and others of their ilk are examples of unsustainable diets that will ultimately fail with time.  Failure means you will lose weight but gain back what you lost and often then some.  All diets with only one exception will fail within nine to twelve months.   Which diet will work?   Hmmmm.  You will see if you stick with this column.

Yo-Yo dieting:  This practice implies that brief attempts at dieting for one or two weeks before falling off the wagon will work.  If it did, we would all be trim.  It implies a lack of understanding of the problem, and even worse, a lack of committment.  Obtaining a normal weight and the health that accompanies it will take at least as much time as it took to gain the weight.  There is no quick fix as you have already learned.

Impatience:  The average dieter wants impressive results too quickly and easily becomes discouraged.  Consistency, time in action, and eating the correct foods and amounts will carry the day.

Diet medications:  These fail to work over the long haul, if they work at all.  Most have long term adverse consequences, are expensive, and do not provide for the fitness part of the equation which as you will learn is the most important part of achieving good health and a normal weight and figure.  There are new medications on the horizen, though they will prove to be even more expensive and once again will not provide for all of the health benefits of exercise such as raising good HDL cholesterol, lowering blood sugar, lowering triglycerides, lowering blood pressure, and lowering heart rate, to name a few.

As Josh Billings once said,  “I honestly believe it is better to know nothing than t0 know what ain’t so.”

It is time for all of us to sit up and take notice.  The standard 27 inch casket has jumped to 33 inches.  We now even have up to 57 inches of casket room available to the needy.  Wheelchairs are thirty percent larger.  Car seats require seat-belt extenders and chairs need to support as much as 600 to 1000 pounds to avoid collapsing.  Solving the weight problems we have is an investment in our future.  It is the biggest health issue confronting us today and adds to the health care budget more than any other factor including cigarette smoking.

The next installment will list about twenty questions we need to ask of ourselves to solve the problems of obesity.  I will provide the answers to these questions as time goes on.

Dr. Philip

His blogs are his own opinions and do not reflect those of his current and past employers.