You're going on a diet, not a Diet

Venus at the Mirror, by Peter Paul Rubens. Voluptuousness is the name of the game.

Lots of English words have two or more meanings, and diet is one of them.

In the context of this blog, I use a capitalized Diet, and a lower case diet.

The lower case diet is the diet that I want you to follow. It stands for the overall types of food and drink you consume. Modifying your diet is one of the only two things you need to do to lose weight. (The other is exercise.)

The capital D is Diet - for those things like Slim Fast, Weight Watchers, the Atkins Diet, the Grapefruit Diet, and so on, artificial constructs that entrepreneurs create to separate people from their money.

If you look at commercials for such thing as Slimfast and Weight Watchers, you will see teeny tiny print that says RESULTS NOT TYPICAL. That is because, for everyone who actually does lose weight on these programs, 90% of them gain back the weight they lost, because they don't change the underlying reasons why they are overweight.

Just what is Overweight?

Let's clear the air. There's lots of propaganda these days about how 80% of children are obese. That's not true. The definition of Obese has been changed to include children who are just a few pounds over the "average" for their age group.

Sure, some kids are overweight because they eat too much and never stop, but most just have normal "puppy fat" which will dissapate normally if they aren't traumatized into either continuing to eat, or stopping eating altogether.

The problem with this propaganda is that it is making kids obsess over their weight earlier than they need to - girls especially, of course.

Indeed, the entire Western World seems to be preoccupied with weight. In England, children are actually taken away from their parents...if the parents are fat! Soon, that will be coming to the US.

Take back your life
It is important that people not get tremendously overweight, because that will impact their quality of life when they get older. Someone who is a mere 10 pounds overweight is not in any danger... so if you want to be 10 pounds over weight, go for it! If someone comments on your weight, tell them thanks, but you're not worried about it.

Future tips will share how tremendously overweight people can lose weight, and keep the weight off once they lose it.