Diets do not work, part three:
The larger variety of food a person is presented with when eating, the more calories that person will consume.
This basically means that if you have ten different dishes, on a buffet table, you are more likely to consume much more than you would have, if the buffet only contained three dishes.
This is because genetically we humans are wired to consume as many different foods as possible to obtain all the different nutrients that we need to guarantee our healthy survival. So, if we are confronted by a large variety of colours, tastes, textures and smells the chances are that we will consume more than we would if we only had a selection of three different dishes.
In the previous articles we have seen that diets do not work for permanent weight loss. We have to actually adapt and change our lifestyle to achieve permanent weight loss. We have scratched the surface of the practical aspects of making permanent changes to your lifestyle and we have also seen that food and emotions are linked. We have also heard that modern food technology exploits our brains by rewarding us with feelgood brain chemicals for eating high calory foods with little or no nutritional value.
To change food habits permanently we have to make small, almost miniscule changes over longer periods of time. This is almost counter intuitive as we want to change the way we look and feel right away but the correct answer is patience and time. We have to teach ourselves new habits. Strangely enough, most people already know what the end game is or should be but because that end game is just so far away from our daily reality, most people just cannot see in their minds eye, how they would even ever get there. In fact, as long as we are talking straight and truthfully, lets just be honest: Most people do not want to lead a healthy lifestyle as they think that this means more veggies and less or no chocolate cake, big mac mc meals, chips of all kinds and other tasty goodies.
When you are making small changes to your lifestyle, you should start with shopping. There are only two main sources of food in modern time. An external source and an internal source. External is all foods that you purchase and consume outside of your own kitchen or home and Internal are all foods that you consume inside your own kitchen or home.
The holy cow is that which is there but that nobody really talks about. This holy cow fact relates both to internal and external food sources and how slim your particular cow is depends on your honesty with yourself. We often do not tell ourselves the truth, in fact I have talked to many people that have told me, in no uncertain terms, that they are following one of my balanced diets and that they still are not losing any weight. Right. No. In fact, in each of these cases and on much closer inspection of kitchen cupboards and fast food habits it became abundantly clear that people lie. Not only to me but mostly to themselves.
Internal food controls are probably the easiest for most people to control as shopping is done on a trolley basis and cutting down or making different choices are more easily enforced than from external food sources. Prior to shopping we can consume a massive breakfast or lunch and ensure that we are not at all hungry when doing shopping.
If the comfort foods just are not that easily available you will not easly be able to snack on them. Remember, do not try to make massive lifestyle changes, follow the step practical action plan that you can create as per the next article.
External food sources are sometimes quite a lot more challenging to control but with the proper tools you can correctly handle any situation that life can throw at you and come out smelling like roses.
Watch out for the next article, baby steps, which covers the creation of your own personalised action plan.
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