Guide to Eating Healthy: It's All About You!

According to advertisers, there are several ways for you to lose that extra belly fat you've been carrying around for years. Just turn on your television and sometime during the ensuing hour you will be told how easy it is with product X and drink Y. "Lose weight fast!" "Incredible results guaranteed!" Truth is, the only thing you are likely to lose fast is your money when you buy these mystical elixirs and the incredible results that you can guarantee are the weight-loss industry's profits. What you are being sold, by and large (and I realize there are healthy weight-loss programs out there, but few are spending the millions in TV advertising the "diet vultures" are) is an artificial form of what you really need in the first place...will power and discipline. The harsh reality is that the great majority of diet programs are substituting their products for your ability to control yourself. To get on the road to real health and fitness, the kind that lasts a lifetime, you have to make fundamental changes in the way you conduct your daily routine. As someone who has spent the last six months molding a new "me," I can tell you that accepting these changes as a permanent part of your life is the only sure way to get and keep the weight off.

First, you have to forget about "dieting." Dieting is what you do to lose weight right before you gain it all back. If what you want to do is diet, stop eating as much, work out more, and lose what you want to lose and then stop "dieting" and gain all of it back. Your results will be disastrous but at least you'll have spent little of your hard-earned cash. Diets are why several well-financed and profitable companies make millions of dollars, because people want a pill that helps them lose weight and then they do, and then they gain it all back, and then they buy the pills again when they have a wedding dress they want to get into or they are going to Hawaii and want to wear Speedos. It's a vicious cycle that may jeopardize your health as you wear your body out losing and gaining weight.