DIET | DETECTIVE^®

There must be as many excuses for not following a diet as there are excuses for not exercising. Usually the excuses fall into predictable categories: no time, too boring, life gets in the way, it is more pleasurable to eat what one wants and to do any thing else except get on that treadmill.

The problem is that despite the compelling nature of the excuses, the scale fails to take them into account when measuring weight. The fact that the sale at the local department store took precedence over the gym, or the chocolate fudge cake served at an office birthday party tasted better than rice cakes, makes little difference on weigh-in day.

I used to try to point out, gently, that it would have been possible to go the department store sale and exercise or just nibble on the chocolate fudge cake rather than down a gigantic piece. But I finally realized that these excuses were simply a way of covering up the fact that the excuse giver had no intention of exercising or eating only healthy low-cal snack foods.

We all use excuses to justify things we really don’t want to do: Any mother who has argued with her teenage child about doing chores realizes that more time is spent discussing why the teen doesn’t have time to do the chores than would be taken up by doing the chores in the first place.

The interesting thing about excuses and weight loss is that when the dieter is really involved in losing weight, nothing gets between following the program and the rest of life. We all know people who have stuck to their low-calorie soup and beverage regimen through elegant dinner parties, vacations, and holiday dining or others who refuse to eat one grape because it might have too much carbohydrate. Determined exercisers are the same.  I knew a woman who ran through a deserted shopping mall early in the morning in her pajamas because she had forgotten to pack running clothes. And another, a professor who travels frequently to the Far East, would go running at 2 am because back home, 14 time zones earlier, was the time he usually took his daily run.

Being successful on a diet requires really being committed to losing weight. As we point out in our book The Serotonin Power Diet, being overweight is enough reason to begin a diet but not enough to stick with it. It is sort of like learning to play a musical instrument or speak a foreign language. The first few weeks are novel and seem easy. Then you realize that to progress you must practice scales or learn verb conjugations and that is boring and repetitious.

Every parent knows that when little Johnny has to be forced to practice the trumpet, it is going to end up in the back of the closet. My husband never progressed beyond the present tense in his years-long study of French because that would have meant memorizing a lot of words.

Every dieter knows that when a vacation two weeks hence represents a chance to go off the diet, or when work offers a good excuse for not finding time to exercise, the diet will soon be abandoned. When these excuses pop up, the dieter ought to take a good hard look at whether this is the appropriate time to lose weight. Work may be so demanding that it will take substantial rearranging of one’s schedule to fit in consistent exercise time. Perhaps this should be done before the diet is started rather than trying to squeeze time to go to a gym into a 12-hour workday. If the temptations of vacation foods compete with the restricted calorie intake of a diet, then it is important for the dieter to decide ahead of time how important losing weight now really is. It might be better to compromise and decide to eat moderately and walk as much as possible but not eliminate foods that make the vacation spot unique and appealing.

It’s also important to remember than every day on a diet doesn’t have to be perfect. One cookie here or there is not going to make or break your weight-loss success.  But for some, one cookie can easily turn into license to eat the whole box or to make a very large cookie a daily habit.  Then you can count on this: The numbers on the scale will start to creep upwards. There is a difference between just not being perfect vs. looking for an excuse to drop your diet plan. 

Being honest with yourself about your readiness and motivation to lose weight will pay off in the end. You don’t have to make excuses to yourself or others as to why you are not following a diet and exercise regimen. When you are ready, there will be no excuses.  

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written by Erin, July 10, 2007

After years of trying to lose weight, I thought about other areas of my life I was successful at. I was a good student so I treated going to Weight Watchers like taking a course - my grade for the week was my weight. And what did I learn this week. Of course, just like school, when you get to the end of school, or goal weight, you have to get a job. Now I treat maintaining my weight like I would a job - no a career. Make it as interesting as I need it to be. Lots of things about my job are not interesting but most of it is great.

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written by Clinton Walker III, July 09, 2007

It always amazes me the excuses I get from my clients. One client told me I stressed her out by asking her to workout 5 days a week.

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