Are All Diets Doomed?

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This post was submitted by an anonymous guest author. I thought the strong viewpoint might draw up some interesting discussion. Perhaps cheat days should be incorporated so that cheating is part of the plan?

Pretty much every diet fails at some point or other. Yes, it’s true - diets are doomed. No matter how well-designed the diet is, almost every person on the diet will end up cheating at some point.

Perhaps that sounds harsh. Maybe it seems as if it couldn’t possibly be true. But pretty much every diet designed is lacking in something. Some diets cut out carbohydrates. Some other diets restrict people from eating red meat or refined sugar. Still other diets name specific foods to avoid, such as potatoes, white bread, or cheese.

Some diets are restrictive in an opposite way in that they name specific foods that the dieters must eat. For instance, some may insist that dieters eat salads at every meal or drink grapefruit juice or eat beans instead of meat four days each week.

Because diets are so demanding and limiting, it is to be expected that dieters will rebel at some point. People who go on a diet for only a week or two are not necessarily going to cheat. However, anyone who tries to follow the same diet for a month or more is almost guaranteed to end up falling off of the diet wagon.

Now, this doesn’t mean that these diets are terrible and should be avoided. All it means is that dieters need to learn how to deal with random lapses in judgment. They need to know how to handle it when they cheat on a diet.

Many dieters feel as if they have failed if they cheat even just once. Stepping away from their diet meal plan makes a lot of dieters breakdown, causing them to just throw the entire diet away. Other dieters may not react so strongly, but they still may think of a one-time cheat as a catastrophe and decide to wait until the following week to resume their diet. Neither of these is the right approach.

Instead, dieters need to know that cheating is inevitable—this is something that should be said at the very beginning so that they will be prepared when it does happen. And, dieters should be told that the best way to deal with cheating is to just pause, forgive themselves, and immediately resume their diet plan with the next scheduled snack or meal.

By learning to deal with the inevitable cheating in this manner, dieters will be ready to handle their problems when the come up—without throwing away their diets.

Featured Information

This post deals with:

cheat days, diet

... and focuses on:

Nutrition

Posted by Lazy Man on May 30, 2008 in Nutrition.

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