my own plan

The moment you start a diet which requires you to lower your calories to below what your body accepts as normal, you have started down the road towards obesity. With each diet that follows, you get a little further down that road. Obesity is just a small step away from type2 diabetes and you definitely do not want to go there.  For five years, my own plan has kept my weight balanced.

Before that I was as guilty of dieting as anyone else.  I kept deluding myself that I could keep the weight off with the right mix of balanced food. In my defense, In the early eighties, I was referred to a dietician by a medical specialist because I had suddenly become 10 pounds overweight. He said I needed expert help.

Normally I could have taken care of that myself, without an aggressive diet. But these were new, modern times, in the beginning of the eighties, when a dietician was a new kind of expert who could help us learn the right foods to eat and how to regulate our weight correctly.

So I was put on my very first diet ever. It was the two third carbohydrate diet also known as the Pyramid. It was the very latest in food technology. Like millions of other people, I never lost a pound.  Instead I gradually realized, with horror, that I had become addicted to bread.

I have learned that when you deprive your body of food, by dieting, your brain sends a message to your metabolism to slow down your energy and begin to prepare for famine. That is so it can turn all the carbohydrates you eat into fat to be stored on your body, and used only to sustain you through the famine. That is why, the moment you stop dieting, the weight is back so quickly. It is all about preservation, your preservation. Your body is never going to know that you cause the famines yourself.

There is an even more unwelcomed dimension to this problem.  You see, between your diets, as your body begins to put the weight back on, your metabolism will begin to adjust what it accepts as your normal weight.  After a diet this will be a higher weight than previously because your unpredictable food shortages have alerted your brain to the likely threat of future famine.

Now when you diet again, you will not be satisfied with the new normal. You will want your weight back down to what it used to be. That will require a much more strenuous effort than ever before.  Even after such an incredible effort, you will still put the weight back on and you will still get that extra bonus weight that comes after each diet. In addition, there is a good chance that after such a prolonged period of dieting, your metabolism will be forced to raise the bar again with a further adjustment to your ‘normal’ weight.

Do you begin to see that if you keep dieting, obesity is inevitable?  Once you understand that, you will realize how important it is to step in with the right method to reverse this horrible cycle of endless failed diets. Personally, I was close to giving up when I decided to go my own way. I decided to trust myself. I forgot what the ‘experts’ had to say. I had met several of them and I knew they were not that smart.

So I did my own research. I then drew on my own knowledge and experience and I found my solution. What I developed is not like anyone else’s idea of a diet, in fact it is a ‘no diet’ diet and I have called it my own plan.

I do not count calories I eat as much as I want. I never feel bloated and my weight has not varied in five years. What you may also like to hear is that during the same period, I have been more energetic than ever before.

I have this great wish that everyone who has a weight problem will get the facts and take the right steps. Start by vowing never to reduce your calories below what is normal to your body.  Then learn from my own plan, how a small change in lifestyle will reset your metabolism, stop your food cravings. It will get your weight back to what it should be.