You may or may not have noticed that I rarely stray into the world of diets or calorie counting. I make no secret of the fact that I detest Weight Watchers. I think the diet industry is just that, an industry. Its advertising preys on our insecurities and makes us feel worse about ourselves (and therefore eat more crap).
I also hate diet products. If you take out a perfectly wholesome-in-moderation constituent ingredient like butter and replace it with an ingredients list that you no longer understand without a PhD in Biochemistry, it stands to reason it will clog up your system with toxins and just make you feel rubbish. If I’m going to tox up my system with anything, I’d rather it was a large glass of red wine.
Gym advertising also bugs me with all its drop-a-dress-size, shape-up-for-summer, only-this-gym-will-make-you-thin nonsense.
And then there was this, kindly shared on Facebook today by a fellow fitness friend of mine. It’s from an American fitness magazine:
Seriously Ms Anderson. You may have high profile celebrity clients but try picking up a tantrumming toddler when you’ve only ever trained with 1.5kg weights and what working mum has the time to spend 90 minutes exercising six times a week?
Have you spotted the theme yet?
Yes it’s all lies. But what jars most of all with me is that none of the above examples is positive, or empowering. None encourages health and most importantly none encourages happiness.
Yes, joining a gym, signing up to Weight Watchers and believing avocados are devil’s food, or trying out Tracey Anderson’s method might make you feel like you’re doing something positive but it’s all temporary. And worse than that, it’s signing up to someone elses’s ideal of what you should be.
I believe the main reason we over eat is because we are unhappy and choose food to make ourselves feel a little better. Don’t believe me? What bride ever over ate on her wedding day? Listen to what your little inner voice is telling you the next time you open the biscuit jar lid or pour yourself another glass of wine.
Now I could tell you that noone ever got obese from an avocado obsession, that sugar is by far the bigger enemy to your system than butter ever could be, that if you truly understood the damage artificial sweeteners did to your health you would gag at the sight of diet soda, that the quickest route to a fat bum is buttered toast for breakfast or that the best thing you could do for your body is find some form of exercise you enjoy, surround yourself with people who make you happy and build a healthy relationship with vegetables and your local fishmonger and butcher … but then you already know that.
So if you’re ready to turn your back on points counting, to quit the long distance cardio and switch to weight training for great results, to form a lasting, healthy relationship with good food and above all to take personal responsibility for your health and wellbeing then maybe we can have a chat.