The Worst Weight Loss Advice I Ever Received

Eat Every 2 – 3 hours

Okay, I love to eat, but eating every 2 – 3 hours makes my life a big eating fest. While this approach may work for some, it certainly didn’t work for me. I follow my slim, French girlfriends and usually eat 3 meals a day, but there are exceptions to every rule. What’s important is that I listen to my body. Your body may LOVE eating so frequently. Listen to it. Honor it.

Exercise sixty minutes a day

Like eating, I enjoy to exercise, but there are days where I can fit in 60 minutes, and other days when sixty minutes just ain’t gonna happen. My rule of thumb is to move as much as possible. Just get active. Again, listen to YOUR body. Sometimes it needs a good sweat, and at other times, it may just want to stroll around the block.

Breakfast should be your biggest meal of the day

We’ve all heard this one, but there are days when I don’t want a big breakfast. To ignore my body and listen to this rule would be foolish. I eat what I want when I’m hungry. Period. Listen to the body.

Eat Fat Free Products

All I can say is GROSS! Seriously, try a full fat yogurt against a fat free one and you decide. When I began to allow good, wholesome full fat foods back into my diet without guilt or fear, my body adjusted to its ideal weight. Plus, eating full fat foods makes a person want less because it’s so satisfying. Eat whole, delicious foods and let your body decide what it enjoys.

Avoid Sweets

I must agree with the experts that too much sugar in the diet is detrimental to one’s health. I think most of us agree on that. However, God gave us sweet taste buds, and I don’t believe that it was simply to torture us but for us to enjoy the pleasure of sweet…in moderation. I do allow myself to experience petit doses of sweets, but remember, the dose is the poison. Un petit! And again, tune into your body.

Use Artificial Sweeteners

We live in a country that consumes THE most sugar free foods (including drinks), and our obesity levels are among the highest in the industrialized world. Interesting.

While each person must make their own decisions, I would highly, highly recommend that you consider an alternative to artificial sweeteners [saccharin, aspartame and sucralose (Splenda)] or at least decreasing your consumption of them.

Animal studies have shown that the sweet tastes of artificial sweeteners can cause an insulin response (just like real sugar), which causes fat storage in the tissues. Yep, our bodies treat it like the real thing.

When I stopped drinking diet soda, I lost weight, and I gained more energy to do the things I love. I’m just sayin….

Weigh Yourself Daily

I remember a woman recommending that I weigh every day. Nonsense! Those were the saddest days of my life, watching my mood go up and down with the scale.

I rarely weigh these days, and to be honest, I could care less. My clothes tell me whether I need to cut back a little or keep on keeping on. I refuse to be a slave to a piece of metal.

Listen, we women, have beautiful lives to create, and a scale is only holding us back. It’s keeping our focus on the weight, and what you focus on grows.

I’m not talking about sticking your head in the sand and ignoring your body. I’m talking about getting so intimately connected with yourself that you won’t need a scale to lead you in the right direction.

Tell Everyone You Know

Personally, I think we talk about our weight issues way too much in the general public. I can’t even go out with my girlfriends without someone talking about someone’s weight. People are sharing their latest diet secrets as if they are some fabulous recipe (for disaster, may I add). And again, keep talking about it, and you’re going to keep your precious attention on the symptom of weight.

If you choose to go public with your goals, then great, but don’t feel that it is necessary to get results. One of the best decisions I ever made was to hire a coach to help me sort out my personal matters. Support is one thing. Telling your every secret is another.

It’s okay if you choose to let people wonder what you are doing to look and feel so fabulous. This is your world, and you can rule it however you wish.

Take a Fat-Burning Pill

Yep, I fell for this one, and I felt like I was going to explode or go mad one. My hair was crawling, heart palpating and I was sweating like a man. And, at the end of the day, I was still the same girl with the same amount of fat, but down about fifty bucks in my wallet.

Weight loss occurs when you listen to your body and nourish it, and popping pills that could potentially have life-threatening risks does not fit within those parameters.

No Pain, No Gain

I wish I had a dollar for every sore muscle and joint that I have endured to try to be in my best physical shape. The truth is that your body can be slim and beautiful without the physical pain of overexercising. If you love to exercise (and I happen to have evolved into one of those people), great! Go for it. But, if you are not a fitness enthusiast, simply move your body more. Find something that you love doing, and do it consistently. Our bodies are designed to move and be active, but that can look so many different ways.

Avoid breads and pasta

Please tell the Italians and French that they’ve been doing it wrong for centuries. Seriously, this one really really “urks” me, as my mother says, because we’ve failed to factor in quality and quantity. There are many quality breads that if ingested in moderation are okay for most people. Pasta is no different. In fact, pasta, when cooked al dente is lower on the glycemic index than many people realize.

Then there’s quantity. During my visits to Italy, I thought I was going to be downing plates of pasta. WRONG! Pasta is a side dish, not the main show. In our obsessiveness with extremes, we have forgotten the simple word, “moderation.”

Trying to avoid whole food groups usually leads to binging later on. Instead, try to find a way to include these foods in your diet in small portions.

Diet

This is probably, by far, the worst advice that I’ve ever received about losing weight. If the dieting industry was the car industry, it would have been shut down years ago. It simply does not work. People jump from one diet to the next, hoping to find the next miracle. My problem with diets is that they set you up to feel like a failure and to not trust yourself. They disconnect you from your own body, and and they don’t work! If they did, we’d all be skinny.

_______________________________________

The Real Truth:

Your body holds your truth. It knows how often you need to eat, how much exercise you need to perform and what foods it desires. Trying to lose weight, without consulting your brilliant body, is a recipe for disaster.

There’s a lot of weight loss advice out there. However, look in the mirror. There’s your expert. Get to know her. She gives free advice, and if you listen, she will lead you back to your ideal body, without drama, without deprivation and without heart palpitations.