On the American Cosmpolitan, Laura Beck lists seventeen reasons why it is useless or harmful to go on a diet . Similar articles are everywhere and in some cases they offer interesting ideas: entering and exiting from one diet to another is not good for health and makes us fatter, making us experience food in a conflicting way. This is absolutely true. On the other hand, however, those who have to lose weight need a different diet , more correct, with healthier habits: we should call it food re-education, but it is always a question of diet. In short, articles like this obviously make us reflect on our absurd need to be on a diet every day of our life,but they must not make those who are trying to revise their diet lose hope in order to lose a few extra pounds. Among the reasons identified by the journalist, some joking, others useless (eating chips), I would like to point out a dozen that should make us think, if we are among those who go on a diet all the time:

– starving is bad: resisting hunger is not a good feeling. Normally whenever we are hungry we should eat, and when we feel full we should stop doing it. Unfortunately, we often eat for other reasons, hence the diet. But it would be a great thing for us if we learned to listen to our bodies, and to correctly interpret hunger signals.

– we become unbearable: those who are always on a diet become annoying, you can not go out and relax, we always and only talk about food and weight, they invite us to dinner and we have a salad, we no longer enjoy the company. And the company notices it.

– in women, being on a diet always has to do with tremendous female competition: we often don’t eat and we don’t like ourselves because we want to look like other women, thinner and more attractive. All that elbow themselves in turn sacrificing their lives to be like this. And all in function, not so much to please oneself as to please others. But why can’t we please like that?

– the diet instills in us a sense of guilt about food: unfortunately it is a vicious circle. The more we are on a diet, the more we establish a conflictual relationship with food, feeling guilty every time we eat, losing the taste of food and the value of conviviality.

– food is good and life is short: two truths that need no comment!

– Going on a diet is boring: apart from perhaps the first day, when we are highly motivated, no one goes on a happy diet: it is a constraint, an imposition. And it is often boring.

– let’s be realistic : we will probably return to gain weight. I’ve always lived thin and never regained weight, but when I went in and out of diets my weight fluctuated by five or six pounds. It happens to many others. Ninety percent of people gain weight. Why bother?

And what’s the solution? There is only one solution: eat right . Without thinking about weight, without thinking about limiting ourselves, but focusing on the healthiness of what we eat, and keeping a little stint if and when we overdo it with heavy foods.

It wouldn’t be hard to stop thinking about weight and focus more on healthy habits. Why not do it?