Normal eating

For me, as I have often said on this website, the most important weight loss tip is know how much you eat. It is not just how much you eat though. Another angle is what you eat, and why.

Many people do not just gain weight because they eat too much, they gain weight because they eat when they are not really hungry. Television series teaches us to console ourselves with ice cream whenever something sad happens, and advertising teaches us to eat, well, all day long. It sounds simple to just eat when you are hungry, but this is often not as simple as it sounds. I had great success with my eat-less-exercise-more diet, but I think one of the reasons it worked so well was because I never dieted before. I know too many people who have been on some form of diet for their entire lives. They are constantly depriving themselves, losing weight and gaining weight. This process of yoyo dieting is probably even worse for health than simply being overweight.

If you tried many diets and found nothing that worked, you may want to look into normal eating. or non-dieting. There is a whole industry built around this topic (watch out for the scams). Linda Moran, author of How to Survive Your Diet and Conquer Your Food Issues Forever built a Squidoo page about normal eating which links to many resources.

I do not entirely agree with the non-dieting philosophy. I am very grateful from the advice from the diet guru's I often cite on this website. I do not think I would have been as healthy and happy as I am if I had not read their books and articles. I do, however, think it is really important to develop a normal relationship with food and it seems some of the principles of non-dieting could help with that.

June 14, 2006