EDDITERRANEAN DIET REVEALED!!

Sorry, I couldn't resist the teaser headline.

I was reading an article today about the benefits of the “Mediterranean Diet” and I started thinking about the silliness of fad diets and dieting in general. It seems like almost everybody you talk to is on some diet or thinking they need to be on one.

Diets fall into the category of “self-help,” a contradictory term that upon examination illustrates the fallacy of the whole concept. How exactly are you helping yourself when you’re relying on advice and assistance outside yourself? So when you gain back the weight, when your Personal Power is turned off, when your path to success remains a Secret, you search for the next self-help guru who will gladly provide another expensive dose of snake oil.

The most hopeless alcoholic cannot be helped by intervention, rehab, or AA until he decides, from the depths of his being, that it’s time to stop drinking, period. That’s real self-help, the only kind that works and matters. All the other stuff makes for interesting reading and conversation, but true, lasting change only occurs when “the student is ready and the teacher appears.”

Here’s the great news: by accepting this personal responsibility, neither blaming others for your shortcomings or looking to others for your salvation, you get to paint the canvas of your life.

I’ve been blessed with a slim physique my whole life. Well, once I was 20 pounds over my current weight, but that was when I briefly got “fitness” confused with “fatness.” If you want to lose weight and keep it off forever, I’d like to share my Edditerranean Diet. Actually it’s not a diet at all, and you can eat and drink absolutely anything you want. Plus I’m probably not going to tell you a thing you don’t already know.

The key to weight control is portion control. Eat a lot of what’s good for you and a little of what’s not. Voila—that’s pretty much it. See, you already knew that. Lean meat, fish, fruits, vegetables, nuts, skim milk, water---giddyup. Processed food, fast food, greasy food, fatty food, sweets, alcohol---slow down.

Come on, this isn’t rocket surgery. So what’s the real problem? It’s simply that the pleasure a lot of people get from eating outweighs (pardon the pun) the pain of how they look and feel. The delicious (there I go again) irony is if they would ever allow themselves to reach their ideal size, overall quality of life improves so dramatically that enhancement of appearance, while exciting, is secondary. Pains disappear, energy skyrockets, sound sleep returns. In other words, the 1-2 hours of “happiness” while overeating each day makes the other 22-23 varying degrees of miserable.

Interesting tradeoff.

There you have the Edditerranean Diet. No calorie counting, no points, no special products. Delicious food, simply prepared, in proper amounts. It’s easy; it works. Try it. And let me know what happens.