How’s the summer eating going?  Did you begin the summer with an effort to lose a few pounds, so that you’d look good at the beach?  Is that momentum still alive?  Or have you been way-laid by vacations, bbq’s, parties, and the craziness of the “summer schedule”?

If your answer is “yes, I’ve been way-laid”, then let’s work on the way you think about food!

If you think of food, your weight, and your health in terms of calories, or dieting,…… you’re doomed.  Your ability to lose weight, get healthy, and keep the weight off forever won’t happen.  This is because dieting doesn’t work –  ever.    Every study ever done shows that between 95 and 99% of everyone who loses weight on a diet eventually gains it back.

Your brain is only capable of so much willpower; trying not to eat foods you really, really want exhausts that willpower pretty quickly.  YOU NEED TO CHANGE WHAT YOU WANT.    Start looking at food in terms of it’s ingredients, and their effects on you,  and WEIGHT LOSS WILL BE A SIDE EFFECT, I promise. 

I had a great conversation with a friend today who thinks I’m funny because I said donuts were cancer in a box.  She said how could one donut possibly hurt you.   Let’s look at the ingredients in a Dunkin Donuts Chocolate Cake Donut: Enriched Bleached Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Enzyme, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Palm Oil, Skim Milk, Sugar, Water, Soybean Oil, Egg Yolks, Contains less than 2% of the following: Leavening (Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Baking Soda, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate), Salt, Defatted Soy Flour, Soy Flour, Soy Lecithin, Wheat Starch, Konjac Flour, Wheat Germ, Carrageenan, Dextrose, Natural and Artificial Flavor, Enzyme Modified Egg Yolks, Gelatinized Wheat Starch, Colored with (Tumeric and Annatto Extracts and Beta Carotene), Defatted Wheat Germ; Chocolate Icing: Sugar, Water, Cocoa, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Soybean Oil, Corn Syrup, Contains 2% or less of: Maltodextrin, Dextrose, Corn Starch, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and/or Cottonseed Oil, Salt, Potassium Sorbate and Sodium Propionate (Preservatives), Soy Lecithin (Emulsifier), Artificial Flavor, Agar

Wow.  I bet your eyes glazed over.  There’s more than 50 ingredients, and 45 grams of carbohydrate.  This is a sugar, chemical, hydrogenated oil bomb.  This was Created In A Lab – not a kitchen.  The dump truck load of simple refined sugars and flours will go right thru your small intestine, into the blood stream and cause an unbelievably fast blood glucose spike, your pancreas will have to spit out a TON of insulin to deal with this.  45 grams of carbs is 11 teaspoons of glucose – your body can only use a COUPLE at a time, the rest will need to be converted to triglycerides.  The Carrageenan is a known stomach irritator;  there’s phyto-estrogenic- thyroid disrupting soy;  there’s high fructose corn syrup to mess up your liver; there’s hydrogenated oils and omega 6 oils that your body will use with bad consequences to make the membranes of your cells;   there’s preservatives and emulsifiers and artificial flavors and colors;  all of these ingredients have damaging effects on your brain, your liver, your digestive system, your nervous system, your arteries,  and your immune system in addition to stimulating areas of the brain that create excitement and addiction.

When you look at a donut and just see the damage that it does to your body, your mind, your moods and energy, the STRESS of resisting is lessened, or eliminated.  Your don’t need your willpower because you find it gross – even scary.  Does this make sense?

Here’s the Take-Away:  Diets Don’t Work because using willpower to resist foods you want exhausts your brain.  Resisting actually creates desire.   You’ll always have some type of rebound where you just give-in or give-up.  Always. Study after study proves this.    But if you eat for your health, and avoid foods that you believe cause sickness and disease, you don’t use willpower.  There’s no anxiety, remorse, sadness, or that gleeful anticipation of “indulging” (i.e. over-indulging) on a permitted day.

It truly goes back to how we think.  Train yourself to LOVE Real Whole Foods:  meats and vegetables covered with delicious butter or healthy oils and good cheeses, some fruits, some nuts and seeds, some dairy;  foods that trigger satiety hormones, foods that nourish you.  Eliminate the distress and misery of dieting.  Eat Real Whole Foods.