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There are many diets and many theories about dieting, and people differ from each other in their body type, blood type, genetic make-up, metabolic efficiency, cultural perceptions, social obligations and other preferences. What is right for one person maybe totally absurd for another. It would therefore be an act of insincerity for us to suggest any specific diet. Instead we will introduce, at the end of this Session, the five principles that we call 'Be smart about it'.
Be wary of all fad diets and their false promises of miraculous results. As we'll explain later, you actually don't want any miraculous results. The dieting industry forms a huge business that grosses billions of dollars annually - greed is the main motivation behind fad diets, and your health and wellbeing, if considered at all, are surely secondary.
Fad diets operate on a 'hit and run' basis. Certain diets are fashionable for a season or two, during which they capture the naive market until a new theory and its promises appears on the scene. Any diet that promises to deliver quick results with a minimum change of lifestyle is attempting to entice you with the same old formula of pleasure and pain. Promising you minimum effort and minimum sacrifice means promising you avoidance of pain, and since that's exactly what we want it makes us gullible and susceptible.
Fad diets can also be hazardous to your health. Losing weight fast by adopting a drastic change in lifestyle may seem to deliver fantastic results, but as you go back to your regular eating patterns you will gain fat quicker and hold on to it for longer. And we haven't even mentioned the often ludicrous fees that are associated with such diets.
Few worthy attainments come without effort, and effort is the best way to go about creating a change of habit. With right effort you will buy yourself new 'good-for-you' habits, and maintaining the new habits becomes easier with time and practice. At a later stage, these new habits will be refined and become your nature, at which point you will live in accordance with them effortlessly.
Right effort is the way to go. With right effort you will gain much more than losing weight; you will experience transformation.
You have to take responsibility for your life and you have to take care of your body and your other faculties - mental and spiritual.
There are a few simple and straightforward principles, and if you act upon them you should be able to maintain a balanced body weight and the associated wellbeing. | |
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