Scared of weight loss and dieting? I have been, too. In fact, for years I even refused to think the dreaded "d" word, diet. But now that I've tried it and it's worked, my fears have melted away.
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I did a lot of my dieting and weight loss "backward." While I did read a book on busting exercise and diet myths to come up with my own plan, when I was actually working to lose the weight over the past year or so, I didn't bother reading about diets. Now, I'm on a non-fiction kick so I've been reading a lot of diet books. Plus, some of them have interesting recipes.
As I read, as I talk to people who've been working on their own weight loss, and as I see different plans coming out, I'm more and more convinced there is no one "right way" to optimal health. I think the struggle is finding out what works for you, and realizing that your body isn't the same as Dr. Diet Guru A or Fitness Expert B. The books I read often have good ideas in them, as well as some truly awful ideas, but that's because only some of the information would work for me.
For example, I read this morning in a New York Times blog that one diet/fitness expert now thinks that eating breakfast isn't a magic cure-all for losing weight. Now, that makes sense to me. What I've heard about the studies on eating breakfast is that it is correlated to people who've maintained weight loss, but not that it's been proven to be causally related (i.e. they eat breakfast, but that doesn't mean it helped them lose or maintain weight loss). I'm sure for some people, eating breakfast does help them maintain or lose. For others, they can probably go without and be okay. And I don't think it helps to panic because for one day, or two, someone working to lose weight doesn't eat breakfast.
In all things, moderation.
Good news: for the past week, the scale's been giving me readings of 137-138. I've been trying to add in even more walking to my routine, and it seems to be paying off. I try to exceed 10,000 steps at least five days a week. How about you?
Rachel and Maui 5 by *Windthin on deviantART