I’m DONE dieting. NEVER AGAIN.

Good for you! I love what you have to say about the idiocy of dieting and I totally agree with you - I just wrote a blog post that touched on my personal distaste for dieting and the diet industry in particular. (You should read it if you have a chance!)

Here's a bit of what I wrote:

When you're looking at a diet (whether it's the 17 day diet, the lemon juice cleanse, Atkins, south beach, whatever) you need to ask yourself "Can I do this for the rest of my life?" If the answer is no, you shouldn't do it! Chances are you'll stress your body and send it into starvation mode, causing you to regain any weight you lost once you go off the diet, and probably making you gain more in the long run! Also, when the diet is finished or you invariably fail to follow whatever ridiculous regimen it prescribes (trust me, you WILL eventually break down and eat a carb) you feel like a failure, you get frustrated, and you give up and go right back to your old habits, because you never learned how to change your lifestyle sustainably. Eventually you try another diet, buying more books and meal plans and supplements and whatnot, and the process repeats itself. The only thing that gets thin is your wallet.

People hawking diets make money by keeping you on a yo-yo – it’s worth remembering that if you actually lost weight and kept it off, they'd be out a customer. Their business plan relies on 1) making you feel like there's something wrong with you, and 2) convincing you that it can be fixed if you buy their books and products. Essentially, they prey on (or even create!) your insecurities and offer you an easy fix backed by science that is shoddy at best and usually just outright lies. You think, “Why would I work out every day and completely change how I eat when I can just buy this book and do this one little thing and get the same results?” There is no quick fix that really works (I know, it sucks), but they won’t make any money telling you that. They tell you “You need to drink this shake to cleanse your body of toxins!” You think, “Hey, I don’t want toxins!” But really your body handles its “cleansing” quite efficiently on its own. Anything promising to rid you of mysterious “toxins” is just trying to rid you of your spare cash. You should always be suspicious of ANY diet for these reasons, and even more so if they are promising unrealistic results (weight loss of more than 2 pounds per week, the ability to "target" a certain area of your body for weight loss - it's just not possible to selectively burn fat from one area!, and so on), asking you to buy books, shakes, or supplements, or asking you to completely cut out certain food groups (like our old friend the carbohydrate).

What the people selling diets, hawking pills, and promising quick, easy results will NEVER tell you is that the best, most effective, and simplest way to lose weight and get healthy is FREE. Not only do those people prey on our insecurities, they are actually making us less healthy. When you're promised a quick, easy solution, what you're going to get is at best a lighter wallet, all the weight you lost back (maybe more!), lowered self esteem, and a screwed up metabolism.

A good rule for life in general: If it sounds too good to be true, IT IS.