Are All Meals “UNFRUITFUL”?
By: Chris Read

Seek the brief answer? Well, it’s interestingly, YES. Now, you might be thinking, "I have to stick on a program on having MEALS just to keep control of myself." Dieting always involves a diet algorithm which may affect your mentality which may drive failure, encourage you to ignore hunger and satiety signals, and sometimes promotes a negative relationship with food, because you have to QUIT forbidden foods and eat foods you don't really like. This inevitably results in bingeing. So, though this idea may sound radical, we firmly believe there is no good diet.

By "diet," we mean the deliberate ploy to restrict the amount or kind of foods you're allowed to eat for the mission of losing weight. Though we certainly do endorse consuming a wide variety of healthful foods and thinking twice before eating a lot of foods that are high in calories but low in nutrition, we don't recommend following any kind of plan that tells you what, how much, and how often you should eat, without regard for your body's hunger and satiety signals.

The Psychological and Mental Effects of Dieting

Even if you weren't particularly concerned about food prior to dieting, all of a sudden you become obsessed with it. You’ll find yourself preoccupied with the thoughts about what you'll be having for your next meal; whether you can have some chips, what others are eating, or even what you'll allow yourself to eat tomorrow.

The mind and the body are inextricably linked, and never are this more apparent than when you go on dieting. Geared to survive during feast or famine, both body and mind switch into survival mode when the food supply is diminished. While the body turns down the metabolism and becomes a slow burner in an attempt to hang on to every single calorie, the mind gears itself to one purpose: getting food. Result? You find yourself among recipes, planning menus, cooking elaborate meals, or even dreaming about food at night. The message is clear: Your body wants food, and your mind does it, too.

After a few days of extreme restriction, you'll probably become more dejected and apprehensive, because you are depriving yourself of things that are very pleasurable for you that aren't replaceable -- leaving a void. You may suddenly start to feel depressed, anxious, and isolated. As a result, you can end up eating more food in one sitting than you ever did when you weren't dieting.

So the same amount of food that would have satisfied them during times of plenty left them feeling hungry after a period of semi-starvation. The same thing happens to you when you restrict food. Suddenly, you develop the urge and the capacity to binge, and you no longer feel satisfied after eating what you used to consider a normal meal. In short, restrictive dieting can trigger binges and leave you hungry even after you've eaten normal amounts of food.

We see these same patterns in dieters: the preoccupation with food; the anxiety, depression, and irritability; the tendency to go off the diet and eat more than one would have in the pre-diet days; and a propensity toward bingeing even after the diet has ended.

About The Author Chris Read, editor of Hateweight.com, is a contributing author to the Hateweight.com, & ezine articles postings. For any health related issue please feel free to visit the website hateweight.com for more information. Or write to AT editor@hateweight.com.

This article was posted on April 26, 2005

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