Читать книгу Only Fat People Skip Breakfast: The Refreshingly Different Diet Book - Lee Janogly - Страница 32

Most dieters have such a distorted view of their own bodies that they don’t know what their genetic shape should be. They accept the idea that there is an ‘ideal’ body and that theirs is far from it. So whenever they feel bad about themselves, regardless of the cause, they say they ‘feel fat’.

Although you see yourself as weak-willed, self-indulgent and lacking in self-discipline, none of this is true. No-one has ever tried more diligently to solve a problem than the chronic dieter. You have followed every recommendation ever made regarding the best way to approach what you see as your problem. You have deprived yourself of food in endless ways, and spent time, energy and money in your efforts to find the answer.

Unfortunately, the diets you have embarked upon have always failed you in some way because, if you are an over-eater or binger, once that urge to eat is upon you, there is no way you could stick to a diet devised by someone else. These diets never address your need to turn to food when under stress. That is why only four dieters out of every hundred keep the weight off.

Even now, scientists are testing production of a new, ‘safer’ diet pill—one that will eliminate hunger without the damaging side-effects of previously used amphetamine-based drugs. They might as well not bother. Most overweight women do not eat because they are hungry. They eat because they are tense, stressed, bored and often because they are depressed at being fat. How many times has the following scenario been played out by a woman and her concerned partner:

Him: Why are you eating that?

Her: Because I’m fat.

Him: But if you finish that whole packet you’ll be even fatter.

Her: I know. I don’t care.

Him: But you do care. You keep saying how miserable you are because you’re fat.

Her: Just LEAVE IT will you! I’ll do it when I’m ready.

That’s it, mister, leave it. She will do it but in her own time. Any word from you will send her diving into the biscuit tin.

You may not believe it, but you are not deliberately being self-destructive if you eat when you’re not hungry. You eat at these times because it feels ‘right’ to you – as if food will ‘help’. And you’d be right. For many years, compulsive eating has provided you with a coping mechanism.

So it makes no sense to assume that the thousands of people who are currently dieting are somehow deficient, that they lack the strength of character to achieve anything, particularly when many of them succeed in their pursuit of goals in other areas of their lives. Those shapeless women Members of Parliament who reach the front benches and look as if they get dressed in the dark are a good example. Clearly there must be something in every diet that ensures its ultimate failure, regardless of how long it’s been in the bestseller list.

Dieters always assume every aspect of their lives will be perfect in a smaller size. They cling to the belief that the next diet will be their passport to a better life, and they are putting everything on hold until this magic moment arrives. Compulsive eaters can’t imagine not being on a diet – the only alternative lifestyle they see involves eating everything in sight.

The truth is that if people ate natural produce all the time, including grains, fish, chicken, fruit and vegetables – even a certain amount of butter or oil – they would be slim and have adequate nutrition. Highly processed, fatty, artificially sweetened stuff just confuses your system. Your body simply doesn’t know what to do with the chemicals. Ultimately, this sort of food is not satisfying so you crave more of it, and you lose track of the brain’s usual regulatory signals that tell you whether you are hungry or full up. When your body doesn’t get what it wants, it keeps trying, eating till it is satisfied.

As a seasoned dieter, you probably welcome the rules and regulations of a new diet and feel relief to be able to hand over your food decisions to the author, assuming they must know what they are talking about. But diets never live up to their promises if they prescribe some quirky food permutation or are very restrictive. You will always find a reason to go back to what you consider to be ‘normal eating’.