Pizza is healthier than cereal.
Drinking a little alcohol, especially wine, every day is good for you.
You don’t need to exercise to lose weight.
This stuff ticks me off! Each contains a kernel of truth, telling us what we want to hear: essentially, we can eat pizza, drink wine and not exercise while still losing weight and being healthy.
Excerpts from studies are ripped from the whole, combined with a sensational headline and voila. Just what people want to hear, and just more confusion to keep them overweight and wondering why they don’t feel better.
Let’s dive in:
- Pizza: Yes, a light cheese, cauliflower crust, veggie pizza will be healthier than Fruit Loops cereal. But that’s not what the headline says, and most people don’t read much beyond that. Focusing the majority of what we eat on vegetables, fruits and whole grains (hint: “whole grain” is not determined by the claim on a box of processed somethings) is the best way we know to improve health (check out the only diet proven to reverse heart disease) and to reach our ideal weight.
- Wine: Drinking alcohol does not improve our health. Full disclosure – I drink wine on occasion. I like it. But I don’t pretend it’s providing me any health benefit. And, from years of coaching clients, I’ve seen alcohol have a detrimental effect on both weight and health; when they decrease or stop drinking alcohol…yep, both improve.
- Exercise: Sure, diet tends to have the biggest impact on weight loss. After all, it might take you an hour to burn 300 calories but only five minutes to eat that many! The thing is, when you lose weight, you lose muscle as well as fat. Exercise helps preserve some of that muscle (contributing to your metabolism), which aids not only in losing but also maintaining your ideal weight. Even more, the benefits of exercise beyond weight loss make it worthwhile on its own: boost your creativity, improve your sex life…what’s not to like?
What’s aggravating is that weight loss is fairly simple. But it’s not easy because, let’s face it, your habits have been in place for a long time, probably decades. So, hearing that pizza and wine are healthy and exercise isn’t important for weight loss…well, it keeps you stuck, feeling like a failure and ultimately makes weight loss harder.
Okay, rant over.
Weight loss is more about your mindset than anything else. And I’m not talking willpower. It’s easy to control behavior for a short period of time, but it’s not permanent. And regaining the weight feels pretty crappy.
Want to reach and maintain your ideal weight? Let’s chat! Go here to schedule a FREE Breakthrough Strategy Session.