Fashion Mode

Personal trainers are often asked, "Which diet works?" The answer is, they don't. Dieting creates long-term problems that make it easier to gain weight, harder to lose weight, and harder to keep weight off in the future. In other words, dieting actually makes you fatter!

If diets don't work, does that mean you should just eat lots of chocolate, drink lots of wine, and be merry for your waistline is genetically determined anyway? Of course it doesn't. There is a path to a leaner you, it just doesn't include someone else's diet.

What does work is entrepreneurial eating. An entrepreneur takes responsibility for a project, does their research, and launches an enterprise with their own personal imprint on it. Being an entrepreneur also implies a long-term investment. Diets are short-term propositions. A lifestyle overhaul is what you need for permanent success.

This is not the way most people tackle their weight problem, however. Instead, they swallow the latest low carb, low-fat, eat like a caveman plan that worked for someone else. Those in the diet industry may have good intentions, but they often make people feel incompetent when it comes to finding their own path to fitness.

Let's liken the weight loss guru to a recovered alcoholic. He is often legalistic. Since this person is a successful non-drinker, he has credibility. Since he is a legalist, he is sure that the method he used for kicking alcoholism is THE ONLY WAY. Any other method, any other school of thought is ridiculous, stupid, and probably dishonest.

This is the way diet and fitness products are often sold. Some trainer, dietitian, or doctor loses weight and keeps it off utilizing a particular method of eating, exercise, or combination of both. So, he or she writes a book and shares their sure-fire method.

You read the book, get inspired, and lose some weight. You put the book down and promptly put the weight you lost back on. Then you feel like a failure and you've added one more nail in your metabolism's coffin.

This scenario is true over ninety percent of the time. The problem is that we all like rules. We all want some parameters. "Please, tell me what to eat!" is a common request from personal training and weight management clients. The rules, however, have to be discovered and put in place by you, or they won't work for you.

Any book, nutritionist, trainer, doctor, or video series that claims they have the universal fix is just wrong. They are being legalistic, like our sober friend. You may read an article from a doctor who has a new intermittent fasting method of eating that worked great for him. Then you try it and put on five pounds! Just because a certain diet worked for the skinny fashion model on the cover of her book does not mean it's going to work for you. Chances are her body type and yours are completely different.

So, yes, we all need to color in the lines; there are some universal truths, but we don't all need to color the same picture, or apply those truths the same way. Be an entrepreneurial eater. Take the time to discover what works for you. When you do, don't shove it down someone else's throat. It'll just make them fat.