For all unsuccessful dieters, remember that only Irish coffee provides all four essential food groups in a single serving: caffeine, fat, sugar and alcohol. Of course, we’re kidding. But, if you believe any part of that, there may be something very wrong with your ideas about dieting.

Dieting, as it has been practiced in our country, has been a monumental flop in the battle against obesity. Today, millions of Americans are on diets, and they’re spending more than $33 billion dollars a year on weight-loss products. Many of them work to some degree, for some length of time, either by starvation, deprivation or punishment of some sort or another. But, inevitably, they all seem to fail, bringing the dieter crashing back to the overweight condition they were in when they started.

One of the problems that seem to be common to all yo-yo dieters is that they don’t really understand what dieting is. Oh, they’re told what foods not to eat. There are lists and lists of every category of no-no foods: no-sugar, no-calories, no-fat, no-soy, no-gluten et al. And if it’s not “no,”--it’s “low.” Low-carbohydrate, low-cholesterol, low-salt, and on and on. But very few diet systems explain how and why dieting works as related to the body.

The human body works exactly like an engine. It obeys the laws of physics— principally the law of conservation of energy.  That energy that translates into work, must first enter the body as food. When a person uses more energy than he receives in caloric food content, he or she must lose weight. When he or she expends less energy than the caloric intake—he or she must gain weight.

The average adult eats about 2400 calories a day. He or she burns an average of 2300 calories.

This measly 100-calorie difference over a period of time accounts for the rising rate of obesity in our country. To combat this inevitable outcome, all that’s necessary is either to eliminate one cup of coffee, with cream and sugar, per day— or keep the coffee and just burn up 100 more calories. That’s the equivalent of about 14 minutes of tennis or 20 minutes of gardening.

When you make either of these adjustments, you’re not dieting—you’re practicing weight management. And, though the end results may be similar, because it deals with the principles of cause and effect-- it works much better than dieting. You understand what you’re doing and why. You’re not just blindly following daily menus for each meal of the day, or a list of what and what not to eat. Weight management puts you in control.

Of course, you need to keep an accurate account of your daily food caloric intake. And there are tables that tell you the caloric out-take rate for every type of exercise, sport and body movement. But once you get the hang of it, and start seeing good results, you’ll start losing weight faster than you can say Jack Sprat.

by Bruce Heath, DnC
Your Health and Medical Consultant