You! On a diet!
Hmm, can you guess which book I recently checked out of the library?
I'll give you a hint: "You on a Diet" is the name of the book. Yes, I suck at guessing games.
I was in the library this week picking up a book I had reserved through the library's online system when it hit me: A library has books on its shelves. This library I am standing in right now is full of books on its shelves. Including books about diet and exercise. Perhaps I should check one out from the shelves instead of spending the hard earned money I don't really have anyways on books.
So I browsed through all, gee, four racks of Dewey decimal'd books (it's a really small library branch) until I found the diet and exercise books. I thought I'd look for that French Women book -- even though I have the nagging suspicion I may already own that book -- but didn't find it. I did find two books I've always wanted to peruse but did not want to buy. One was You on a Diet: A Guide to Waist Management (or some such title like that; if I like the book I'll figure out exactly what the title is and post it here) and the other was the Beck book a lot of folks have blogged about.
I started with You on a Diet. Because the cover was blue. I don't know. Anyhow, I'm maybe ten whole pages into the thing. I think I'll keep reading some more. I have a short attention span when it comes to self-help books. It sounds fabulous for about ten to twenty pages and then, because I have no patience when it comes to books, I skip ahead to the end to try to glean just what it is I should be doing or saying or eating or waxing to make my life all sparkly and wonderful. Then I find out it's something like "never eat anything remotely tasty again but you can have plenty of vinegar and glitter" and I close the book and put it aside, never to be read again. Guess how many self-help books I have bought or checked out that I've never finished? Yeah, about 98% of them. This is why I don't buy the damn things anymore. Or least, I try not to.
Is it just me, or are all these books tending to be the same? Within the first words of the book (heck, probably on the cover) the You book has already fallen into one of two categories that all diet books fall into. Either your fat is completely not your fault (the You book), or it is your fault but actually not really. Both then tell you how not to be fat anymore. Often involving copious amounts of vinegar and glitter.
So far, I have learned from You on a Diet that agriculture is why we all became fat, all diets are impossible to follow and that's why we all became fat, and that I should never have to count calories again because counting calories doesn't keep us from being fat. Okey doke.
What I started thinking about is that I've never been one to follow (adhere to, become a convert of) any particular plan. I cherry pick. But eventually it all comes down to: Eat less. Move more. A lot of food is crap. Avoid the crap.
Except that You on a Diet told me that even the eat less part doesn't work. Because modern food is evil. And then there was a YOUreka! imp off to the side and then I went to see what was on the USA network.
I would also add in there that it also all comes down to: There are no quick fixes. But that's my own, not out of any book. Because they all say you can have results in only three days! Seven days! Two weeks! 21 days! A month!
Why don't any of them say that if you eat less and move more and avoid the crap that you'll lose up to a pound a week and depending on the amount of weight you have to lose this process will take anywhere from five weeks to 18 months or longer?
I know why. Because those books don't sell.
My favorite part of this book so far is that the print is nice and big. That may be all I take away from it: Did not strain the eyes -- give it a big thumbs up!
If you're wondering if I have a point to all this, so am I. I think it my point may be that when you get right down to it, the solution to losing weight and eating healthy is very easy while the implementation of that solution is extremely difficult. Did I need yet another book to tell me this? Not really. Remind me, maybe. That's why I come here. Other than to amuse myself, hopefully amuse you, and hopefully keep myself from committing homicide for just one more day.
In other news, and after all of that, I'm down another 0.2 lbs today. Cilley scale antics aside, no way am I taking this for granted. I am mindful of what I am eating and when I am eating and why I want to eat nearly every second of the day. It's fairly exhausting. In fact, I'd really like a pizza tonight. Or homemade hashbrowns topped with eggs over easy so that the yolks break into the hashbrowns. Comparing the two, the hashbrowns and eggs is probably the healthier and definitely the cheaper option. Pretty sure no one ever hunted and gathered a pizza, yeah?
Cheers,
the CilleyGirl
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