Give Up the Fad Dieting! It Doesn't Have to be That Hard!

We all get super excited as the new year rolls over. It's a jumping off point to start to make changes, feel better about ourselves, set goals, and get our health back on track. But it's also the perfect time for big companies, book writers, and every celebrity health guru to push every fad diet out there in your face!Literally, while on the treadmill at the gym last week, not even really paying attention to the tv put more concerned with getting all the words down to my new favorite song. :) I caught the tail end of two infomercials, a Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers commercial, some new diet called the "Scrap Diet," (What the heck is that!) and a man on the Today Show talking about his new book "The Miracle Berry Diet!" So now you can drink water with lemon, take this new miracle berry (found in West Africa) that they've turned into a  pill and it'll change the taste of the water to make it taste like lemonade! This guy is a big time chef and seems to have stumbled across something huge! And it will probably be the next big thing so I say kudos to him!! But, seriously it still doesn't change the fact that you're taking some kind of pill to change the way you eat, lose weight, speed up your metabolism, or whatever you're looking to do for the "quick fix." ( I know I get a lot fired up about this logic.)It doesn't have to be that hard! I think we end up torturing ourselves more than we really have too. And I'm not knocking Weight Watchers, etc. They have a lot of success stories but you never see the people who it didn't work for! Diets are hard, strenuous on the body, you're cutting out so much of what you love to eat, it only leaves you grumpy, short fused, and miserable. (Have you seen someone detoxing off of coffee-Yikes!)These kinds of diets still leave you eating out of a plastic container, a card board box, or tin foil-all loaded with chemicals, sodium, and low on nutrients. Eating well takes a little more time, planning, and sometimes costs a little more at the grocery store, but in the long run you feel better, you lower your BMI, cholesterol, glucose levels, you start having more energy, sleep better, and you start seeing  results. The yo-yo diets leave you heart-broken, frustrated, giving up, and starving.All it takes is a little determination, will-power, and time. Things aren't going to dramatically change in two days or a week. But if you give yourself and your body time to heal, you will begin to notice the changes in your health, body, mind, and spirit. All you have to do is set some health goals for yourself or your family. Shop the perimeter of the grocery stores, avoid the center isles as much as possible! Buy whole foods, items with one or two ingredients, find a little extra time to prepare the meals, change your mind about all the coffee, candy, chips, soda, and junk you consume regularly and choose to eat them in moderation. These types of food are supposed to be a treat. We, as humans tend to over-indulge ourselves ALL the time. And we lose the satisfaction of actually "treating ourselves."All these wacky diets, crazy procedures, cooky pills, and boat loads of information they constantly push on us every day, all day through the tv, radio, magazines, and books doesn't have to consume your life and leave you disgruntled and disappointed. Just choose to eat healthy for a healthy lifestyle, it's a simple as that! So save yourself the money on all the new diet books out there and buy a little more greens for salad and vow to eat one at least once a day. Make that your first step! Start by changing one thing at a time to see the life long difference.