WHAT?!?!?
Yes, you heard me right……Throw them away. When is the last time you actually stuck to them anyway? You buy into the promise that you will lose 10 pounds in the next month or the new fad diet will change your life. You’re bombarded with commercials that lull you into the belief that their products are the next best thing to sliced bread. Or you promise yourself that you will go to the gym everyday and workout. Yet every year most of us will make resolutions only to throw them out in the next few months. So why not start off throwing that resolution away and try a new approach?
Diets DON’T work and here is why:
- They drain your will power: How long can you go before you start craving that cookie or pizza because you “aren’t allowed to have it?”
- They don’t give you the tools and skills you uniquely need to succeed: Ask yourself, “Did this diet give me a skill or tool that will help me when I meet a challenge or life obstacle?” “Did this diet address my unique lifestyle and individuality?” “Is this something I can do long term?” The answer is probably not.
- They work against your metabolism and often times, slow it down. You are unique and a “one-size fits-all” diets will not work for everyone. Diets teach you nothing about how your body works. They do not help you understand how your body responds to certain foods, exercise, your unique physiological triggers, nor how your body responds to hormones, stress, and change.
So what works?
Knowledge+Experience+Practice+”Failure“=Success
You need knowledge, plus experience (multiplied overtime), plus practice, and some obstacles sprinkled in. This is no different than any other skill or activity that you may start. Right now we are creating a homestead on two pieces of property. This takes skills and time to learn. I’m finding out what works best for us. I’m studying and watching what others do. I take information and test it. I ditch what doesn’t work and keep what does. We learn from our mistakes and make adjustments accordingly.
Transfer this to healthy living. You acquire basic knowledge about metabolism, exercise, hormones, nutrition, and how stress and lifestyle affects all of this. Then you work within this knowledge and your uniqueness and apply it to your life. You need to live with it, try it, tweak it and adjust it based on your unique circumstances.
Life is not static and neither is your metabolism. You have to be ready to change with the circumstances. This is a continuous journey and there will never be a time that “you arrive.” Instead you are continually evolving, learning, and growing.
Dieting and diet programs are like me making New Year’s resolution to become a homesteader in 8-weeks. I do nothing but watch YouTube videos, read articles, listen podcasts from the best homesteaders in the business. Sure, I pick up and shovel and do some planting, maybe even buy a few chickens; but then the garden dies and chickens refuse to produce and I say, “To heck with this, its isn’t for me,” I’ve gained nothing.
You inherently know this won’t work and I know I am never going to reach my long term goals this way. So why would you think that it would work when you embark on a new “diet” program? You learn nothing, you change nothing (at least, not long term) and in the end, you may even end up worse than when you started.
So Where Do you go from Here?
It’s time for a new approach and a new mindset.
No more resolutions!
Instead arm yourself with knowledge and put that knowledge into practice day in and day out. Use guidelines and treat them as such, not hard and steadfast rules. Learn to understand YOU and how you were uniquely created. This will take time, practice, and some tweaking as you keep what works and discard what doesn’t. How long? That depends on you. A new study (Lally P et al, Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 2010;40:998-1009) showed that the average length of time it takes to form a new habit is more like 66 days instead of 21. But that doesn’t mean it will take that long. This same studied showed that it could take 18 to 254 days. This variation could vary from person to person but you also have to factor in the circumstances and individual challenges.
Set yourself up for success. Gain knowledge, set up a support system, and find someone to hold you accountable. I’m not going on my homestead journey alone and neither should you embark on a new journey alone. Find a partner that you can learn and grow along side with.