I'm really hoping I will be joining you Target members tonight! Fingers crossed...
It really gets to me when you see in the papers 'Diets don't work' etc, meaning that the change isn't sustainable. And then on the other hand people I know keep saying 'So are you going to stop soon?' when I tell them I'm near target. Well, no. I'm not going to stop. I don't want to go back to having crème eggs for breakfast, fatty meals, chocolate and booze every day, pasties and sandwiches here and there... Hello, everyone! Diets don't work long-term if you go back to doing exactly what made you gain weight in the first place! It's obvious!
I suppose it's true to say that really restrictive diets don't work, because you don't learn sustainable habits. Diets won't work if they starve you so much your metabolism shuts down and you lose all your muscle. And maybe diets don't work if they don't get you to address your mindset around food.
But really a diet is what you eat. SW has some 'rules' (just like basic healthy nutrition is based on 'rules') therefore it could be considered a 'diet' - it just happens that it's not faddy, it's a balanced normal diet and doesn't eliminate food groups! I personally think we need some rules, or at least guidelines, because we live in a society where just going out and eating whatever you feel like tends to lead to weight gain. The balance of power between individual people, with stressful lives and emotions, and big corporations, with masses of money to put into addictive chemicals and advertising, is completely unequal.
So if doing something like SW doesn't work, then there is no hope whatsoever for people who are unhealthy or unhappy because of being overweight. And it doesn't exactly make me feel good to read things like that when I have been working hard for so long to get healthy! But at the same time it makes me really determined to keep at this, to make a change for life and to maintain.
Ooh that turned into a bit of a rant! But it just makes me really cross when media imply that what the majority of people do is 'normal' and dieting, in the sense of sticking to guidelines for a healthy diet, is not 'normal'. That's why the health of this country is in such a mess!