One of the largest sectors in the American marketplace is the diet/health food sector. I’m old enough to remember how margarine was better than butter and how oat bran would lower cholesterol. I’ve seen the rise and fall of Weight Watchers, Scarsdale Diet, Nutrisystem, Slim-Fast, Atkins, South Beach, Mediterranean, and now Keto as the diet of choice.
When I was 17, I lost 42 pounds and for 20 years, I kept it off. When I started my own law practice, I fell off the wagon. I was eating too many bagels and too much rice, I tested for pre-diabetes and I don’t have a sweet tooth. I had a fatty liver. Starting last November, I changed my diet, eliminated the bagels and rice, added a lot of avocados and lost about 35 pounds. Even after losing that weight, it’s a daily struggle to keep that weight.
The reason that most diets fail is because of will power and most people gain back the weight after a successful diet because they go back to the bad choices that led to their weight gain in the first place. I go back to a bagel a day, I’m going back to 180 pounds. I start eating a quart of rice for dinner with Chinese food, I’m going back to diabetes.
When I first loss 42 pounds in high school, I took the Tommy Lasorda route and went on the SlimFast diet. When I lost 35 pounds during this current diet, it was a variation of Keto with eliminating most meat. You’ll hear a lot about diets and all I can tell you is that dieting isn’t rocket science: to lose weight, you have to cut calories. If your body frame supports 2,000 calories a day and you only eat 1,500 calories worth, you’ll lose a pound a week without exercise. Dieting is a numbers game, plain and simple. I don’t know if Ketosis works or not, but I can certainly tell you that whoever tells you that fasting slows down metabolism or makes you eat more isn’t telling the truth. Whether you devote calories to fat or carbs, eating fewer calories over an extended period will cause you to lose weight, plain and simple.
Whatever gets you to cut back on calories is the diet that will work, plain and simple. It’s a game of numbers and as long, as the numbers are behind you, you will succeed.
