Dieting!  Dieting!   It’s just a bore!
I try and fail, then try some more.
Limited portions and watching fat,
Counting calories and things like that,
But all I ever really do
Is seem to gain a pound or two!

I grew weary with diets several years ago…here are my top ten reasons to ditch the diet:

Number Ten: Being on a diet is like carrying around a 70-pound backpack full of loud little gremlins who are always poking you in the back and sides reminding you that “you can’t eat that!”  You carry that baggage with you everywhere you go.

Number Nine: You can’t relax at a party and enjoy socializing because you hear the party food talking in one ear (“Remember how good I taste!”) and the diet snickering in the other ear (“Hahaha!!  You can’t eat that!”)

Number Eight: You don’t enjoy a meal out with friends because your diet-mode brain churns the whole time.  Brain waves bounce from “Which entree is the safest choice?” to mentally berating yourself because you made a not-so-good decision.   The rest of the meal is spend having conversations in your head with every bite about how you get back on that diet tomorrow.

Number Seven: Tomorrow rarely comes. You wake up one day and realize you’ve spent your whole life on a diet, thinking about a diet, or breaking a diet.

Number Six: When tomorrow does come, you pick up the backpack and repeat the process, often eating foods you don’t even like. 

Number Five: Food rules you because your life is centered around the calories, fat grams and carbs, with the hope that this is the diet that will finally work, and you’ll be all it promised you would be.

Number Four: Dieting makes you believe that you can accomplish weight loss quickly, so you weigh every day only to find yourself discouraged because the scales are barely moving, or going up instead of down.  Then you console yourself with comfort food.

Number Three: Being on a diet takes away the reality that averaging a 5 pound loss a month is 60 pounds in a year…which is far better than failing on 5 or more diets, and ending the year with a gain of 15. 

Number Two: Beating yourself up for breaking your diet cannot be counted as exercise.

And the Number One Reason to Ditch That diet: It never worked before…I can’t see Diet Number 1,152,484 working, either.

When you realize you’ve dieted for years and still find yourself in bigger clothes than last year, it’s time change your focus.  It’s not about the weight.  It’s about the focus.  Come visit me tomorrow…we’ll talk about that.
UPDATE: I started watching the State of the Union address, and lost my focus… Hopefully I will have the post read on Friday!