by Michelle Wilkinson

Created on: April 24, 2009

The only way to get off the diet treadmill is to re-educate yourself about diet and nutrition, as well as learning the benefits of exercise. Everybody wants to believe that there is a quick-fix solution to their weight problems, but in reality losing weight involves making alterations to your lifestyle which you can commit to in the long term. If you want to lose weight you have to learn to control what you eat and how much you eat, rather than letting food control you. It is pure common sense that you need to consume fewer calories than you burn; often, though, it is breaking the psychological relationship you have developed with food that is the most challenging aspect of losing weight.

Perhaps that is why people initially find following fad diets easier than following a more realistic eating plan, as it removes the need to make any decisions for themselves. If they know they are only allowed to eat three meals of watercress soup a day they can just avoid all those foods which they usually end up eating too much of. They don't have to face the challenge of ensuring they are getting the right balance of foods or worry that they are eating too much, because it is all laid out in front of them. They know for certain that they are going to lose weight if they follow such a restrictive diet because they are consuming far too few calories, a thought which can keep them motivated, at least for a short while. Before long, though, their bodies are craving real food and they may find that they cannot think of anything but all the foods they're not allowed.

If you follow such diets they will ultimately end in failure because you won't be able to continue following them for long, and indeed they're not designed to guarantee long-term weight loss. Cynical book publishers and diet 'gurus' are aware of some people's desperation when it comes to losing weight, and are quite prepared to exploit people's desire for a quick and easy solution. When you stick to these diets you generally lose weight quickly at the beginning, but soon put the weight back on, and often more, when you fall back into old eating patterns. You therefore need to fundamentally re-assess your diet plan and your exercise programme if you are going to lose weight and keep it off.

In order to lose weight you need to recognise where you are going wrong so that you can rectify the situation. Usually you are overweight because you have been eating too much food, particularly the kinds of food which are full of calories, fat, sugar and salt. You therefore need to address how much food you eat and try to adopt healthier eating habits. It helps to get into a different routine which you can follow each day so that you get used to it; thus if you don't usually have regular meal times you should ensure that you make time for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and maybe snacks in between. You also need to find ways of incorporating more physical activity into your routine so that exercise is no longer seen as something out of the ordinary, but as part of your every day.

It is possible to break the cycle of dieting and gaining weight, but if you have struggled with your weight for a long time you can't simply expect the necessary changes to happen without you making a conscious effort to develop healthier habits and continue practising them even when you have lost your excess weight. People who are slim, fit and healthy tend to be that way because they have found a routine that works for them and because they put the effort into maintaining a healthy lifestyle, which is exactly what you need to do if you also want to be slim.

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