Scale Back

Every year, approximately 10.5 million Americans spend $33 billion on weight-reduction programs and products. Unfortunately, the only significant weight loss the overwhelming majority those dieters ever experience is a momentary decrease in heaviness as their hard-earned cash leaves their pockets. We have become so enamored with the prospect of loosing excess pounds that the weight-loss craze is the second most popular recreational means of spending money, topped only by fitness. As a nation, we are consumed with thoughts about dieting. One thing that I have learned over the years is that throwing money at a problem is not going to resolve the problem; regardless of what the predicament may be.

Due to the over abundance of goods and services that are readily available to every consumer’s want, or whim, we have developed a convenience store mentality when it comes to making permanent changes in our lifestyles. No one is keen on investing a little time and effort into a healthy lifestyle that will return solid dividends in the short term, and reap huge benefits over the course of one’s life. The way we have thrown money at weight loss products, pills, programs and surgical procedures blatantly portrays our “Quickie Mart” mentality that says, “Who cares what it costs, I am in a hurry!” Folks just want to pay for a quick fix to resolve a health condition that more than likely took years to create. Yes, we have been spoiled. Simply put, our way of thinking cries out, “We want the world, and we want it NOW!” Of course, that is why internet auctions sites are chock full of overpriced treadmills and steppers that are now collecting dust in someone’s basement. Folks, you do not have to spend a huge some of money on worthless weight loss equipment, pills, support programs or surgery to loose weight! If you are bent on throwing away money because you believe that you can buy a healthy lifestyle, just toss your cash into an envelope and send it to me.

Alright then, so what’s a body to do? Should we eat foods high in protein and low in carbohydrates to lose weight? Others will say that the key to weight loss is to juice our fruits and vegetables and eat everything raw. Maybe the secret is to eliminate certain foods all together! Other programs want to sell us food; then our only task in order to lose weight is to heat and eat those foods. I know this will come as a huge shock to you, but the fad diets, pills, programs, prepackaged meals and surgical procedures are actually responsible creating the two greatest hindrances to effective weight-loss management. First, the problem with these quick fix methods is that we still have to learn to prepare and consume appropriate amounts of nutritious food after we have lost the weight. Second, whenever you force you body to deny itself of a particular food item, it will rebel! Think not? A key rudiment of weight loss success centers on the fact that you can not deprive your body of those foods that satisfy the pleasure center in your brain. If you are not satisfied, or satiated, after consuming a meal, you are destined to fail because you will inevitably eat junk until you feel content.

Even those men and women that have taken drastic measures to lose weight -- such as having a physician staple their stomachs or resorted to a technique known as gastric banding -- still find ways to eat too much and remain overweight. It comes as no surprise to me that even when resorting to such severe or stringent measures such as: starvation, fad diets, pills, programs, prepackaged meals and surgical procedures, those dieters who are forcing horrific changes upon their metabolism by employing such severe methods will most assuredly regain any lost weight within one or two years following the implementation of any “Quickie Mart” weight-loss program.

An overabundance of weight-loss programs and information is responsible for mass confusion about how to take weight off and keep it off permanently. We run to and fro trying to snag the easiest quick fix weight-loss program only to look in the mirror and see we are still fat despite losing hundreds of pounds in our lifetime. Through tears of discouragement we stare into looking glass deeply and say, “What can be done?”

# posted by David @ 1:41 PM