(1) Diets at their core are designed to deprive our bodies of calories. Conventional
thinking says that over-eating, or too many calories are what makes us fat and/or
unhealthy in the first place. We just addressed the root causes of being unhealthy and
overweight, so already you can begin to see that just cutting calories is not the solution.
Your body is a giant battery and has fat stores in it. When you deprive it of the food
energy it needs, yes, it will begin to burn fat for energy. The fat is converted to glucose
(blood sugars) and then burned as the energy you need. However, this is a short-term
fix. The second you cheat or break your diet (eat more calories) your body reacts by
storing even more fat. You have confused it into thinking that you may starve yourself
again and so the reaction is to put on even more weight to prepare for this possibility.
You have probably heard this referred to as the “yo-yo effect.”
That brings us to the next reason diets fail. They are temporary! No “diet” I have ever
heard of can last forever. Additionally, we are hard wired to want variety. Boredom is a
real human emotion and it relates to our food as well. Unless we grew up eating a very
limited diet, and have never deviated from it, our senses desire variety. Given that, in
any calorie cutting diet, there is not enough variety to keep us from cheating. Even if
you have enough will power to make it to your “weight loss goal” most people go back to
eating that diet, tasty with variety (and unhealthy foods) and just put the weight back on
for the previously talked about reasons.
If you are always worried about what you can and can’t eat, that makes the diet harder
to stick to. Education is the key to any kind of progress in life. That’s why this book is
going to make it simple to know what you should and shouldn’t eat, and make it easy to
have those foods around at all times!
I would like to take a moment to address nutrition education. This is often why many
other “diet” plans fail. The participant is none the wiser to how their body works. They
are just following a specific plan of caloric deficiency with no idea how it’s actually
affecting them inside. You may have heard or read horror stories of people going
vegetarian or vegan and getting really sick or their teeth falling out etc... Some of these
stories may be true, BUT the fact is that you don’t get sick and your teeth certainly don’t
fall out if you are getting the proper nutrients.
With other diets, you’re hungry, your breath stinks, you get constipated etc... The
Winter Wellness Diet is different because it addresses all of your body’s nutrient needs.
This allows your body to detoxify, repair and have tons of energy in the long run.
Diets in the conventional sense are expensive. Buying specific food, drinks and
supplements at the start often has a big impact on a budget. I did a review of the new
Zone 1-2-3 diet last year and products ran upwards of $700 per month! That’s in
addition to the regular food you buy at the store (or farmer’s market if you’re going
green). $700 is either enough to keep most people away from dieting, cause them to
quit sooner, or get really mad when they “yo-yo” back to their original weight or more
and feel like they wasted their money.
Now, I can honestly say that I have never experienced this feeling because of my
weight, but depression can be a big deterrent to starting a diet. (25) First of all on a
physiological level, if your body is deprived of the correct nutrients, depression can be a
predictable result. (22) There are many nutrition therapies for depression as it has been
found that many causes of depression come from hormonal imbalances in the body.
Basically, the brain doesn’t get enough nutrients to operate properly and ends up not
producing the correct hormones in the correct amounts. (3) CBS reported on this in
2004 and nutrition therapy for depression gets more popular every year.
Depression can absolutely be a huge obstacle. Maybe you think that if people find out
you’re on a diet they will judge you. Well, I’ve got news for you, if you are unhealthy,
overweight or both people are judging you anyway. But I say, WHO CARES! Even if
the world thinks there is no way you’ll succeed with this diet, this time, all you have to do
is prove them wrong once. Am I right? You’re not making this choice to lose weight or
get healthy for anyone else but yourself. Let’s do this, you and I, together.
