Yes, Virginia, there is the best diet in the world. Let me explain.

First of all, what would be the attributes of the best diet in the world?

1. It would be understood by easily available food.

2. It would NOT require any fancy measurement or fixing.

3. It would be easy to follow at a friend’s dinner, at a nice restaurant, or at Mickey Dee’s (McDonald’s for old fools like me).

4. It would not only help with weight loss and control, but with general health.

5. It would be made up of our favorite foods.

HMMMMMMMM! TEACH! I SEE A PROBLEM!

Okay, you can put your hand down. I see it too. It’s that “favorite foods” thing, isn’t it?

Everyone has different “favorite foods,” and we won’t even get into gourmet, regional, or ethnic cooking. I leave that to my daughter and her husband. (Psst! Have you seen the pictures of my grandchildren?)

Anyway, let’s see if we can put together the world’s best diet for health and weight loss…for you!

You see, therein lies the problem, as my good friend, although slightly older than me, Billy Shakespeare would say.

We are all different. We are different ethnically, environmentally, educationally, genetically (we ran out of e’s), and dare I say it, sexually. All of these things are important, because they influence the results of any diet anyone tries.

Hey, there’s a good word, “try.” How many people do you know who actually stick to a diet…especially for the rest of their lives? I guess we need to add another attribute. The best diet in the world would have to be one:

6. You could and would stay for the rest of your life.

WHY THE REST OF MY LIFE?

Simple. I don’t care what diet you follow and how well it works. If it works and you stop eating according to that diet, eventually you will find yourself where you are now and wonder where you put this article.

So, to create your “World’s Greatest Diet” we have to go back to the title of this article, “The World’s Greatest Diet for Weight Loss and Health.” I put “weight loss” AND “health” in there for a reason. There are diets that don’t really help you lose weight, there are diets that aren’t good for your health, and weight loss doesn’t automatically equal health…particularly if that weight loss is achieved through diet.

Here we go. It doesn’t really matter what foods you eat. If you like apple pie, eat some apple pie. If you like popcorn, eat some popcorn. Filet mignon? Sure why not.

Let’s back up for a minute. A “diet” is simply a list of the foods you eat. In recent decades, the word has been loaded with all sorts of extra things like the pancakes at IHOP. A doctor can put you on a “diet” to help you avoid hives, get over an upset stomach, or even gain weight if that’s what you need for your health.

If that doctor puts you on a “diet” that says you can only eat seven foods, he or she would be doing you a serious disservice (pun intended). To get the nutrients your body needs for health AND weight loss, you need a diversity of foods… and that diversity can range from soup to nuts… to Filet Mignon! You don’t have to JUST eat cabbage. You NEED to eat cabbage, burgers, cookies, broccoli, apples, apple pie, chicken, fish, carrots… you get the idea. You can deny yourself many of the foods you love, enjoy your life too much, and even harm your health without even losing weight by trying weird fad diets and weird pills that make your body act in unnatural ways. .

Your personal “World’s Greatest Diet” is going to be the foods you normally eat and enjoy eating.

THERE HAS TO BE A “BUT” SOMEWHERE!

Absolutely. It’s not about WHAT you eat. It’s about two other things:

1. How much you eat, and

2. How you live the rest of your life.

You see, weight loss and health is all about balance. The balance of weight loss has been known for years. Eat more calories than you use, the excess is stored as fat. Try to use more calories than you eat, your body burns the available fat and hocus pocus you have weight loss. However, simply cutting calories to the bone denies your body the nutrients necessary for health and doesn’t allow for the activity that helps maintain a healthy body. Exercising (the way we most commonly burn extra calories) while continuing to overeat calories not only makes it harder to lose weight, but still creates a condition where our health may be threatened by excess anyway.

A balanced health and weight loss program doesn’t deny you the foods you love to eat, it simply asks you to be aware of what you’re doing to your body and to use some self-control and limit yourself when told to. offer or make food available. As far as the exercise side of the equation goes, “exercise” scares people, so let’s talk about activity. Your exercise program may be gardening, swimming, bicycling, yoga, tai chi; or gardening on Mondays, swimming on Tuesdays, biking on Wednesdays, yoga on Thursdays, and tai-chi on Fridays.

There’s an old saying: keep doing what you’ve been doing and you’ll keep getting what you’ve been getting.

The manufacturers of diet pills and the sellers of diet books know you can see this, so they offer you something that seems to change that dead-end equation. The problem is that without creating any real change in the way you eat and exercise, these diet pills and fad diets will, at best, only seem to temporarily change the real equation and allow you to lose weight for a while. short time, if at all. . They won’t make a permanent change to your life or health, and their “weight loss” effects, if any, will wear off quickly, often leaving you worse off than when you started.

An article like this is too short to go into all aspects of weight loss, diet, exercise, and health, but the basic equations are simple. Too much weight can negatively affect your health in many ways. Losing weight in an unhealthy way can leave you in the same state you were in when you started…or even worse. Combining formal exercise or pleasurable physical activity with sensible enjoyment of food so that calorie intake and calorie use can be balanced will result in weight loss, health, and a lifestyle that will continue to provide benefits for years to come. .