JEN Friendly Nutrition

After all my years of watching people yo-yo up and down with their weight; playing dangerous games with their health and struggling with their love-hate relationship with food, I’ve learned a few things along the way.  To sum it up, I’ve learned that there is no “one diet fits all solution” or should I say “fixes all”.  Any diet that restricts your calories; eliminates a food group or has copious amounts of exercise will force your body shed the weight.  Look it at from this perspective.  A person who has spent the last umpteen months or years eating over their required calories or making not so great choices of foods or being sedentary, all of a sudden makes this drastic cut in calories to their daily diet (which based on current crazy diet plans,  the daily allotment of calories is usually what a small child needs in a day ) or increases their daily exercise (I see people every morning doing hours of cardio) will lose weight.  But what happens after?  What happens when the plan is over?  What happens after you’ve completely burned yourself out because you haven’t fed your body enough calories and it’s starving?  Here comes Aunt Marge’s 50th wedding anniversary.  Can someone say buffet? You end up gorging until you’re sick and then gorge some more for days after.  What happens when you’re exhausted from all that exercise and then one day you just can’t do it anymore?  You stop exercising all together because you don’t enjoy it.  And-you yo-yo.  That’s what happens.  The weight you worked so hard to take off slowly comes back.  Now your frustrated once again and convinced being healthy is impossible.