Are You Having Diet Failure? Then Stop Dieting!

All I have to do is tell myself that I am going on a diet and I immediately set myself up for failure. It seems I have tried every diet known to man. I've struggled through so many different diets, you would think that I should know by now that they don't work for me. Yet every now and then, when desperation about my weight reaches monumental proportions, I always seem to give dieting one more chance.

It's not necessarily the diet that doesn't work. It's my brain. Somehow, my brain decides that my body is being deprived. Even if the diet I'm on is successfully giving me enough to eat, it doesn't seem to matter. I think it's an authority thing. Someone or something is telling me what to do. Eat this. Don't eat that. My mind snaps. Consequently, I sabotage myself and the diet, so of course there is no weight loss. Horrifyingly, there may actually be weight gain.

The minute I accept the fact that I am dieting, I have to set up some type of reward system for myself. I have actually been able to get through an entire week of "clean" eating, if I promise myself that if I have lost at least two or more pounds by the end of the week, I can eat whatever I want. This is actually a concept that lot of different plans out there utilize. Strict eating for six days, and on the seventh day you can rest. Or in my case, binge.

Fat flushes or fasts are obviously the worst. The deprivation during a fast is insane. The Master Cleanse? Are you kidding me? Lemons, cayenne pepper and maple syrup? I will tell you that the first time I tried it I successfully fasted for ten days. Ten days! I must have been out of my mind? Actually, I'm sure I was out of my mind, because I barely remember the experience. And of course, immediately upon ending the fast, I ate everything in sight. So much for that weight loss experience.

All my personal experience with dieting over the years has definitely shown me one thing: Diets don't work. Balance does. You've heard the formula a million times: calories in versus calories out. It's as simple as that.