Weight Loss Helpers

Oh, the no-no’s of healthy living. It seems as if everywhere I look, I’m faced with the same suggestions on how to lose weight, be healthier, and have more energy. But, when I read the behaviors to avoid, I think: I do that, what’s so wrong with that?

 I consider myself a fairly healthy person, I have my fair share of energy, I’ve lost weight. I should get a gold star from the diet gods. But alas, we’re just not meant to be; we differ on too many things.

Top ten so-called diet faux pas that I remain completely unapologetic about:

10. Drinking my calories. Something tells me that the smoothies I’ve come to depend on during the summer months for cool portable meals are not contributing to an unhealthy lifestyle.

9. Eating dinner in front of the television. I was considering spending a nice evening at home, eating dinner and talking to the imaginary family of five I have, but they were watching TV too and asked that I please shut up.

8. Preferring the treadmill to the great outdoors. The benefits of outdoor running are touted everywhere, but uh, it’s not air conditioned outside, and it’s hot out, and there’s no TV floating in front of me to distract me from the fact that I am running.

7. Actually putting the salad dressing on my salad. I like food to be easy. I really don’t want to have to spend my mealtime creating some sort of salad dressing dipping dance. But if it will make the diet gods happy, I promise I will use good fats in my salad dressing.

6. Thinking coconut water is nasty. Okay, so this stuff is nature’s Gatorade, or whatever, but as far as I’m concerned, it tastes like dirty gym sock water. I’m way keener on the chocolate-milk-as-thirst-quencher idea.

5. Eating my food on normal-sized plates. It’s just so sad…a wee little meal. I want to look at my food and think, this is going to nourish me, not I’m going to starve to death. If I want to utilize my salad plates, I’ll eat a salad.

4. Salt. Apparently salt makes you retain water and is therefore evil. But wait, aren’t we comprised of 61.8% water? What’s amazing about the human body is that it totally knows how to regulate itself and water retention is generally short lived due to our handy-dandy excretory system. Nature, you so crazy; I think I wanna have yo baby.

3. Egg Yolks. I eat them. They taste good. The yolk is actually where most of the nutrients in the egg are. The vitamins choline and boitin are found in egg yolks and are vital in maintaining neurotransmitter health, which helps you concentrate and can actually help regulate cholesterol. So there.

2. Eating lunch during my lunch break. Yes, I could use this one hour break I have during the day to burn a couple hundred calories on a stroll around the city but I’d rather use it to EAT MY LUNCH.

1. Carbohydrates. When did carbs become the Darth Vader of food? Carbs are great. Carbs release serotonin into your blood stream: carbs are nature’s happy pill.

I don’t know who Harvey Steiman is, but apparently he said, "Everything in moderation–including moderation," and that’s pretty much how I feel about diet advice. There’s validity in everything, but all advice should be taken with a grain of salt, and without fear of bloating.

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