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Can I have watermelon? Please?
A newbie happened into the chat room yesterday. Not unlike many similar
entrances, the newbie blurted out a question: "Can you have no bacon?"
A chorus of responses came from the helpful old-timers. "No!" "No!"
"Well, you can have turkey bacon, I think."
The newbie persisted. "What about steak?"
"No." "No." "Fuggedaboudit!"
Now, the newbie grew argumentative. "Why? Those are good foods!"
Honey, did you come here to lose weight or eat "good foods"?
Another frequent question asked by newbies is whether watermelon is
allowed because they don't see it on the plan in the yellow book. (What
does that tell you, folks? Are you hoping beyond hope that you can
sneak in your sugar insidiously through watermelon contraband?)
This sort of question suggests to me that people are less than serious
about dieting, unwilling to give up the foods that caused them to pork
up in the first place and rationalizing six ways to Sunday about why
such contraband foods are either good for them or harmless. (After all,
watermelon is mostly water! Yeah, right -- more like a sugar solution
with very little else of value such as fiber.)
My suggestion to these people is always to give the plan a chance. It worked for me,
and believe me, my eating habits were as bad as anyone's. However,
unlike many others, my first step was to admit that both what and how I
was eating were making me an unhappy fat man and both had to change in
order to fix the problem. So, I committed to NutriSystem for five
weeks, vowing to stick strictly to the program and not rationalize
deviations.
Aside from losing over 20 lbs in that first committed period, I believe that this cold turkey, dive in
headlong start was successful for another reason: I lost the cravings
for stuff like steak, bacon, and watermelon. Furthermore, I was
indoctrinating myself to a portion size that was a minute fraction of
what I used to eat in a sitting. If I had stretched the plan to suit
myself, I would still be filling a large serving bowl with salad
greens, dumping a load of cheese and bacon bits on it, adding a half
pound of chicken, and then kidding myself into calling it a salad--a
bad habit I developed on the Atkins diet. I would not have curbed my
eating disorder. And the calories would continue to sneak up until I
found myself doing 6,000 kcal per day again. (By the way, folks,
EVERYTHING COUNTS!)
So, newbies, if you are serious about taking off this weight--and why the hell
are you here if you are not serious about it--how about giving the NutriSystem Nourish
program a chance before you customize it to resemble the "yummie foods"
you like to eat? Get rid of those bad habits--don't promote them. If
this means giving up steak and watermelon, so what?
View food as a fuel that resolves the body's daily energy deficit, not as a "yummie" end in itself.
Published Friday, July 20, 2007 09:09 AM by CondoMax
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