The MedFriendly Common Sense Diet

Every where you look these days, someone has their new master plan for the BEST diet in the world. And once you believe you have found the best diet, it sometimes starts to take on religious overtones. You do your daily dieting ritual and spread the word to others about how your diet is the best and how the others diets are wrong. As an example, just think back to the war of words between the Atkins dieters and the non-Atkins dieters. Each side swore they were correct and each side had evidence to support their claim.

Has anyone ever stopped to think that if there really was one and only one diet that worked, wouldn't everyone be using it by now? What diets do is they provide people with a sense of structure to help them more carefully monitor (e.g., calorie counting) their gluttonous impulses or put them on a specific schedule so they no longer need to worry about making improper food choices. The diet also provides the person with a belief system (e.g., carbs are evil) that fuels the motivation to continue the dieting program.

The truth is that there actually is one and only one diet that works, but the truth is that no one can sell it since it requires you to take control of your decisions rather than having the dieting program make all the decisions for you. Since no one has given this diet a name, I am going to name it here today. It is called the MedFriendly Common Sense Diet. The basic common sense equation behind it is as follows: If you burn more calories than you consume you will lose weight. Simple as that. This means (and here is the hard part everyone), you have to exercise. That's right, you actually have to move and get your body going to burn calories.

When it comes to dietary selections, just use plain old common sense. Check the fat content of everything you buy and generally try to avoid servings that contain more than 3 grams of saturated fat and 600 mg of sodium. Remember that food items in the store contain multiple serving, so if you eat that microwaved meal with 3 grams of saturated fat per serving and there are 3 servings, well, you just ate 9 grams of saturated fat my friend.

Pace yourself to eat three meals of day and keep at least two of them relatively light. Get some fruits and veggies in you each day. If you hate veggies, try the new V8 fusion drink which tastes like a fruit drink but actually has a full serving of veggies in it. Work in a few salads throughout the week if you can, have some fresh fruit, eat some fiber, avoid large amounts of red meat, and drink plenty of water. Just monitor yourself informally. I am convinced that the reason diets fail is because ultimately people feel like they are a prisoner to the constraints of the diet, give it up engorge on all the food they were denied during the diet, gain all the weight back, and then later chose some other diet and the cycle repeats again.

With the MedFriendly Common Sense Diet, you don't have to feel like a prisoner. You are allowed to make your own judgment calls during the week. If you see some pizza or cake that you want and think you've eaten your fair share of healthy food that week and have exercised like you should have, then go for it. You need to use will-power and self-determination to do this. If anyone has questions or comments just let me know and I'll post responses here in subsequent entries. This is the approach I follow and have never had a problem. No more rituals, no more imprisonment, and no more food that tastes like cardboard. Take your life back, use common sense, and enjoy the food that life has to offer.

*Note: This posting does not constitute medical advice. As usual, you should check with your physician before making major lifestyle changes.