A Friend Went On A Diet

A friend went on a diet. Nothing knew. Most go on a diet on a weekly basis. In fact in America going on a diet is our #1 preoccupation.

She was all revved up for this diet. Here it is Monday and she's going to start the new week right. But she ended up eating fried onion rings and a shake, so maybe tomorrow she'll try again. She posted about it on Facebook and received the obligatory funny comments after her confession.

Dieting, or thinking about dieting has become such a part of our thought process, that we expect to fail and have to rah-rah ourselves into trying again. It's a never ending process. We actually don't expect to be successful. Dieting is something we talk about, lament our failures, and go on and try again. Repeating and beating ourselves up, over and over again.

How can we ever be successful by suppressing our natural instinct to eat to satiety? Maybe one can be successful for a day, a week, a month, and some even longer. But eventually we give in, and binge.

This is a crazy thought, but what if we actually never had to worry about diet the rest of our lives? Is that even possible? Do animals in the wild worry about their missed appointment with Jenny Craig?

Here's our problem, and it's very simple: We eat foods high in caloric density and low in nutrient density. If we could just shift that around, eat foods low in caloric density and high in nutrient density, we'd never have to worry or even give a thought about diet. Ever again. Just to be freed from that alone is a Godsend, forget about the benefits of no diabetes, heart disease, digestion problems and auto immune diseases.

Dieting, via the suppression of appetite, is not going to be successful. We are only setting ourselves up for failure. We need to eat to satiety, but eat foods our bodies were designed to eat. And of course what are they? Vegetables, fruits, grains, legumes, nuts and seeds. Whole foods. No animals, dairy or processed foods.

Is it difficult? Yes, at the beginning. It's hard for someone to quit smoking, drugs or alcohol too. They feel like shit at the beginning and so will anyone that eats a healthy diet. We're caught in a Pleasure Trap and we don't even know it. How can we escape the trap when we don't even realize we're in it?