I knew exactly what to do to get into shape and get healthy, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t. What I didn’t know was how to stop eating crap and be happy about it. I knew how to stop eating rubbish and be miserable about it – I had a Gold medal in that one – but how the hell do you change what you eat and be happy about it? The problem is, we have all simply been going about it the wrong way.
TELL ME WHY I DON’T LIKE MONDAYS
When I started any of my diets I would almost immediately suffer, not physically but mentally. I would always start my diet on Monday (when else?). I think if people just stopped going on a diet they would instantly eat less crap anyway. Think about it. When I made the declaration that I was going on a diet on Monday, I would go into ‘food freefall’. I would eat as much rubbish as I could possibly cram in from the Friday onwards declaring to the world, ‘It’s okay, I’m going on a diet on Monday’. So I would always eat a lot more than I would have normally eaten if I hadn’t made the conscious decision to ‘diet’ in the first place. I would then go shopping on the Sunday and buy a trolley full of fruit and veg. Have you noticed how immediately judgemental we become when we have a load of good food in our trolley? We start eyeing up other people’s trolleys and if they have a load of sugar and fat laced ‘foods’ and drinks and they don’t look the picture of health and have a little hyper child with them, we start thinking, ‘well no wonder, what do you expect’. All this and we haven’t even bought the food yet, let alone actually eaten the stuff!
I would then wake on the Monday and immediately start to think of all the things I couldn’t have. I would ‘hang on in there’ using all my might and willpower. To be fair I had usually stuffed myself so much over the weekend in preparation for the dreaded day, that I was usually okay most of the first day. But then out of the blue, usually late afternoon, a little voice would start chipping away and my desire for something naughty would kick in. This is when I would use as much resolve as I could to resist temptation, which normally meant going to bed early in an attempt to sleep the craving away. Halfway through Tuesday and the inevitable ‘I’ve picked the wrong time’ would rear its ugly head. This would be rapidly followed by ‘The bomb could go off tomorrow’ and ‘What’s the point of living?’ and I’d be back where I started. Well not quite – usually I’d then eat more than normal to subconsciously make up for lost eating time.
On other occasions I would not call it a ‘diet’ but simply say ‘As from Monday, I will start to eat healthily’. Now I am sure that whoever invented the fridge hated fruit and veg. There is that drawer at the bottom to put your veg in so that you can conveniently forget that it’s there – only to rediscover it days later when it’s beginning to make its own way out! You then throw the mouldy veg in the bin with the declaration, ‘I forgot all about that, if I’d have remembered I would have eaten it. Oh well, let’s go get a take-out – it doesn’t matter because I’ve decided to make a fresh start … on Monday.’ Recognize the pattern?
I never once got excited about getting a slim physique and gaining health because of the hell I thought I had to go through in order to achieve that goal. I never once looked forward to a change of diet; it was always a feeling of dread. I was defeated before I started. We should all, if we think about it logically, be very excited when we are about to change what we eat in order to get the body of our dreams. But if you are psychologically hooked on certain ‘foods’ and you believe that you gain something from them – pleasure, comfort or whatever – then those foods, even if you know they are also making you fat and ill, do not become less precious if you are forced to do without them. As you have no doubt experienced, they become the most precious thing in the world. Your entire focus is on either eating them or not eating them – as a result you experience the same mental tug-of-war that so many people think they have to go through.
The problem with this is there is only so long that anyone can ‘hang on in there’ and experience this often nightmarish mental tug-of-war. No wonder I never succeeded on a diet. No wonder it has such a high failure rate. And that is the real problem with diets – you effectively force yourself to do something which you do not want to do in the hope that you will reach what you do want – i.e. your ideal weight or optimum health. But all the time you are doing something you don’t want to do you are having an internal, and often external, tantrum. One side of your brain wants the fat producing ‘foods’ and the other half doesn’t because you want to look and feel better: ‘Yes I will, no I won’t’ – it’s a constant mental battle. There is only so long any sane person can do this before they say ‘Sod this for a game of soldiers, life’s too flipping short!’
WHEN ARE WE EVER FREE?
And at what point do we ever feel free from this mental battle? I use the term ‘free’ to describe not having to worry about the food we eat or having to exercise discipline and control over our intake; I mean truly free to eat what we want, whenever we want, free from guilt and restriction. So, when are we free? The minute the diet is over? I would say no. Because, when the diet is over we then start to eat the same crap which made us miserable in the first place and in no time at all the battle starts all over again. And every time we diet we end up with a bigger battle on our hands. When you have been knocked down just once it’s easy to pick yourself up. If you keep getting knocked down you end up thinking ‘what’s the point in getting back up?’
The answer is to remove the very thing that is knocking you down – this is not simply the type of food itself, but more the conditioning, brainwashing, and misinformation that is the cause of why we put this crap in our mouths. All these factors, as well as the diets themselves, combine to create the belief that life would not be as enjoyable without junk and drug-like foods. That life would be ‘dull’ and ‘boring’ if we ate healthily and did exercise; that people who do this are boring, no-hope health freaks who have forgotten how to really live; that it is a ‘constant battle’ to be healthy and maintain your ideal weight. I used to believe this rubbish too.
Two of the main weight loss clubs in the world also perpetuate the belief that it’s a lifetime battle – so much so that you have to attend their meetings every week just to make sure you are still on track, that you haven’t ‘fallen off the food wagon’. Yes I am talking about Weight Watchers and Slimming World. Now, before I go on, I must say that I am fully aware that both of these organizations have helped many, many people throughout the world and if you get a good ‘leader’ at your meeting place, they can be extremely effective. However, I also know that however admirable their motives might be, they are often instilling in the person with a ‘food problem’ the notion that they will have to try and ‘control’ their weight forever. They usually imply that almost no matter what they do, for them, it will be a constant lifelong battle.
TOTALLY POINTLESS
Weight Watchers used to have a ‘points system’. You were awarded certain points per food and at the time they probably thought it was a revolutionary system. However, did you know that as far back as the late Thirties and early Forties there was a very similar points system used for restricting people’s intake of food? It was called the ‘Rationing’ club! Yes, when food was scarce in the war people were given ration books and were allocated what were literally called ‘Personal Points’ for each day. You were allocated a certain amount of points and each food had a ‘value’ – sound familiar? The big difference was, no one was in the rationing club voluntarily and no one was pleased to be losing weight either. The whole business of counting the ‘points’ value of certain foods and rationing yourself accordingly is nothing short of madness. I bet there was not one single person in the war who ever thought they would see the day when people would actually pay for the privilege of deliberately restricting the amount of food they were allowed by counting ‘points’ – especially in times when food is in abundance.
Most diet clubs give the impression that if you don’t do things like count points and attend weekly meetings you will binge and go back