There are a thousand different reasons for the growing number of overweight and obese individuals. Everybody has their favorite.
We eat too much. We don’t exercise enough. We spend too much time in front of the TV, on the computer, in the car, behind a desk. We’ve supersized our meals. We’ve got junk food vending machines in school cafeterias. Gym classes are gone due to budget cuts.
And on and on and on. All of these are true.
But if you’re looking for a solution to your weight problem, don’t worry about any of these things. They won’t help solve your problem.
Sure, you probably eat too much and you probably don’t exercise enough, and yes, that will need to change. But if you think about it, when most people decide to lose weight, aren’t those the first two things they do change? Of course. Most people go on a diet and/or start an exercise program.
And after losing some weight, they end up right back where they started.
So here’s a thought. Maybe you should start somewhere else. How about instead of going on a diet, you try this instead…
Stop eating shit.
Pretty simple.
The first thing you need to do if you want to lose fat and keep it off for the rest of your life is to stop eating shit.
Simply cutting the quantity of the food you eat will not lead to long term change if you don’t first address the quality of the food you eat.
25% of American adults eat fast food on a given day. Going from a large fry to a medium and a Big Mac to a cheeseburger for a little while may help you lose weight in the short term, but it is just a short-sighted strategy. You’ll eventually go back to the Big Mac and right back into those bigger pants.
And this isn’t just about fast food. There are plenty of other examples of crap disguised as food that are probably in your shopping cart on a regular basis.
Bagels. Candy. Cookies. Soda. Juice drinks. Meals that come out of a box. Frozen pizza or other convenience food. Hot dogs. Most cereals. Margarine. Chef Boyardee crap in a can. Hamburger Helper. Crackers. Potato chips. Chicken nuggets… I could go on for a long time.
Processed crap full of empty calories, trans fats, sugar, chemicals, and void of any real nutrition.
We’ve become a nation of people who are overfed, yet alarmingly undernourished, because of the dramatic rise in the consumption of processed convenience food that we consume.
If you can’t recognize half the ingredients on a box of something, that might be a sign that you probably shouldn’t be eating it on a regular basis. Instead of buying foods with dozens of ingredients, try buying foods that ARE ingredients.
Fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, fish, meat, eggs. Maybe you’ve heard of them.
Think back to the 60′s and 70′s. The majority of the processed convenience food in today’s grocery stores didn’t exist. People actually prepared real food.
And we didn’t have an obesity epidemic.
I firmly believe the reason most people fail in their quest to lose weight is because they focus on the quantity of food they eat, and never give any real thought to the quality of the food they eat.
The first argument people usually give me when I suggest this is that “It’s too expensive to eat healthy.“ Please excuse me while I call bullshit on that.
A bunch of bananas costs less than a family sized bag of Lay’s potato chips. Stop buying candy, soda, bagels, fruit drinks, Cheez Whiz, cookies, etc., and apply the savings to real food. Expense problem solved.
Yes, even when you cut out the crap you will still need to eat fewer calories than you burn, and you do need to incorporate physical activity into your life. But you need to start by changing the quality of the food you eat.
You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to. I’m just telling you what I firmly believe and know to be true. You can choose to believe it or not.
You can try my way. Or you can just go on another diet and get a gym membership. Let me know how that goes for you.
~Dave
Dave Soucy is an entrepreneur, coach, trainer, motivator, husband, dad, and former fat guy. Learn more about him here.
You might also like:
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by fitnessexperts and Dave Soucy, Dave Soucy. Dave Soucy said: What You Should Do Before You Cut Calories http://su.pr/2nbOma [...]
Amen!
“Simply cutting the quantity of the food you eat will not lead to long term change if you don’t first address the quality of the food you eat.” This is the most important thing to do before dieting. Great post!
Great point and I agree. I sickens me when I stand in line at grocery store and look at baskets filled with processed “mess” and almost NO real food in it. Their taste buds are so warped they cannot taste flavors anymore. Which addresses the next thing I hear from people about food. “It doesn't have any taste” is another addiction to foods no “eating things” (doesn't really qualify as food) steers people.
WHY because their tongues are being given a version of cocaine each day and they cannot taste good quality foods without all the neuro-exciters in processed foods.
Great point and I agree. I sickens me when I stand in line at grocery store and look at baskets filled with processed “mess” and almost NO real food in it. Their taste buds are so warped they cannot taste flavors anymore. Which addresses the next thing I hear from people about food. “It doesn't have any taste” is another addiction to foods no “eating things” (doesn't really qualify as food) steers people.
WHY because their tongues are being given a version of cocaine each day and they cannot taste good quality foods without all the neuro-exciters in processed foods.
[...] haven’t worked out. (In most cases, there’s a simple reason for that which you can read about here.) That doesn’t mean you need to throw every possibly healthy behavior out the window. Forget [...]