Please, Don’t Pacify
Yesterday, I flipped through a junk magazine in the nail salon and learned all about how I could ‘follow a cookie diet’ and lose ten pounds in week.
Or, I could opt to do a ‘cleanse’ in order to ‘jumpstart my metabolism’ which would also render a solid, double digit reduction in weight in a very short period of time.
Interestingly, neither approach mentioned that the amount of weight one loses, might possibly have something to do with how overweight they are. Nor did it include any hint of moving one’s body, or getting enough rest.
We, as a society, as humans, want to believe that things that we know are not good for us actually are.
If you’ve ever had to break a habit, say, for example, smoking, we can refer to this as an example. Before you decided you’d reached the last straw and did actually quit, you probably put it off for a while and didn’t want to look at how harmful it really was. Maybe you avoided reading the latest studies about how X years of smoking increases your risk by X-fold for X diseases. If you’d ever come across an article that seemed to lessen the detrimental effects, you may likely have latched on to it, using it as rationale to keep on smoking, trying to make yourself believe it wasn’t all that bad.
It’s absolutely the same when it comes to what we eat and what we chose to believe are healthy options.
People can be overweight for a multitude of reasons. While that’s far from a new piece of information, we need to look at the fact that the ‘diet’ industry is a multi-billion dollar one which thrives in its customer’s failure. A repeat customer is one who has tried a diet, bought whatever pills, potions or gimmicky exercise devices, fails and then does so again. It is in their best interest to keep their consumers from succeeding because that would mean they would not return for more purchases.
Similarly, big food companies also want us to think that we can ‘go ahead and have that one cookie’ because what harm could one cookie do?
We want to believe it’s true.
And for some, it is just a matter of eating one cookie now and then and forgetting about it.
But for most, it’s never just one cookie. I’ve written about sugar addiction and my position that it is absolutely a drug addiction, and that it’s in mega food companies’ best interests to keep enough sugar in many or all of their products in order to keep their customers coming back for more.
So, on top of that, if they can get big, recognizable brand-name diets, magazines, grocery stores and media in general to come on board and agree and send a message to everyone who’s trying so desperately to get healthy not only that ‘everything in moderation is a great idea’ but that one can actually eat cookies to lose weight, everyone benefits! Yeah!
Everyone, that is, except for the person who remains in a continual struggle to lose weight, vascilating between what they consider ‘being good’ and eating a too low calorie, bland diet which is not sustainable, to falling prey for the confusing messages coming not only from media, but from their very own doctor and opting to follow something such as the cookie diet, to becoming frustrated that they actually did not lose weight on the cookie diet, to saying ‘the heck with it’ and veering so far off track for days/weeks/months that they end up even heavier, more unhappy and that much further away from a healthy, lean body weight.
We do have to accept responsibility, too. It’s not just on the big companies to come correct; they are, after all, for profit business and what they are selling is fair game in the US.
Once again, education is where it’s got to start.
And we don’t need a degree in science to assess that eating a cookie diet is the ticket to weight loss.
Paleo is, though.
Call it Paleo or don’t, but if your diet is 40 – 50% fresh veggies, and the remainder is equally divided between wild proteins and natural fats, you’re going to be much closer to getting to your ideal weight far more quickly that if you go the cookie route.
Let your common sense lead you; not your wish to be pacified…
