Diet is temporary, weightloss is permanent
Filed under: Eating Healthy, Exercise, Weight Loss, Work Out
How many times have you heard a friend or a family member say “oh, I found this new diet. It looks so great and my friend lost 20lbs with it. I’m going on it for three months”? Actually, how many times have you said that to yourself? If you’ve heard it or said it, you’re a victim of one of the most common myths about weightloss and health.
The Myth
Everywhere you look there are people telling you that weightloss and being healthy is about temporary efforts. Try this diet for two months, go on this eating plan for four weeks or start this exercise program for ten weeks. All of these things are telling you that you can lose some weight, put on some muscle or get healthier with a short, one time project. Unfortunately, this is nothing more than nonsense.
The Truth
If you’re on some temporary health project such as diet or exercise plan, you may indeed see some results. However, like your project, these results will be temporary. The minute you stop this diet, eating plan or workout routine, your body will go back to where it was before. This is because your unhealthy habits haven’t changed, you just took a short break from them. As soon as you go back to them, the weight will come back and the muscles will go away. You do not change your health through temporary efforts. You’re not going to accomplish permanent changes with a program that’s going to end in a few weeks or months. The only way to get permanent results is by making permanent changes to your life, and this is something many people don’t seem to understand.
Counting Points
There have been a number of studies on people who have gone on various eating plans. Do you know which one is the most successful? It’s weight watchers. Interestingly enough, this program is successful not because it encourages you to eat specific foods, but because it teaches you a new way to think about foods and portion sizes. Weight watchers leaves you with knowledge and skills that you will use for the rest of your life and that’s why it works. This is an important lesson for everyone out there who is thinking about getting healthier.
Don’t do anything temporary. Anything you do needs to be a permanent change. Any exercise plan needs to be something you can keep up for the rest of your life. Any eating habits need to be things you can do every day of every week of every month for all the years to come. If you’re going on some insane, “I’m not going to eat anything but shrimp” diet, you better really love shrimp because that’s all you’re going to eat from now on.
Now there are some cases where temporary plans are good, but only if you’re working towards a temporary goal. For example, if you’re training for something specific, like an upcoming marathon, then yes, you do need a temporary plan with an end date. However, ask yourself this, is your health temporary? Do you want to look good for the next three months and that’s it? Are you only interested in being healthy for the next year? If the answer is no (and I really hope it is) then you better stop thinking of diets and workouts as a temporary. Start thinking about them as lifelong habits that you’re about to learn. Otherwise, you’re just setting yourself up for failure.
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“However, ask yourself this, is your health temporary?”
Extremely excellent point. I had a doctor ask me once, “Is your career more important than your health?” I was sick all the time which brought me to this doctor, and I had to say out loud, “Yes.” Because it was true. I always put the job ahead of my health which included my weight.
All all of the these weight loss programs can give you quick fix reults, but like you said they are always temporary. The ones I think are the worst are the ones where you have to eat their food. Well, what happens once you get skinny. You go back to eating real world food, and if you haven’t addressed your lifestyle habits, all the weight will come back and sometimes even more.
Hi Stephanie,
Yep, just got to get your priorities in order and start thinking about your health as a part of your life, not as a four week plan.
Have you tried any of those meal plans? Did any of them do more than just tell you what to eat? I’m curious to see if any of these plans try to educate their customers about why eating healthy is important.
Gal
“The minute you stop this diet, eating plan or workout routine, your body will go back to where it was before.”
So true. For many months I’ve been exercising on and off but never saw any results because I always did it a different time each day was likely to forget about it. So even if I did get into a habit of exercising, getting interrupted one day could break the cycle long enough for my body to go back to the way it was. Now I exercise every day first thing in the morning and am finally seeing maintainable results. I did it to feel more healthy, not to lose weight (I’ve never been overweight, but there’s room for improvement), but surprisingly I’ve seen progress in both areas. The first few days it was hard to get out of bed and go running, but after it got easier and results started appearing I’ll never go back.
By the way, you missed a word here:
“Weight watchers leaves you with knowledge and skills that you will use for the rest of your ? and that’s why it works.”
Hello Jeff,
Yep, that’s exactly my attitude. If you don’t make it into a regular habit, you’ll never keep it up.
What kind of exercise are you doing besides running? I’ve never been a morning person myself but I do like to wake up with a short workout. Then I do a full one in the afternoon.
Gal
And thank you for spotting that mistake. I went ahead and fixed it.