Get real to be healthy!

I'm getting really sick of the word "diet." If I hear one more person mention the word "diet" following a cheesy label like "South Beach" or "no carbs", I am going to have a vein pop out of my forehead. I've read about diets up the wazoo and not a single diet out there has sounded less than bogus in creating lasting results.

I'm 27, 5'1" and almost 40 lbs. lighter than I was a few years ago. From the age of 21 to about 23, I was overweight, perhaps even obese for my frame, which is an almost petite pear. I never worked out, I drank soda like it was going out of style and worst of all: I was in denial about my weight. The denial part got fixed with a few pictures that made me cringe and having to consider the plus size section as a source of clothing, but once the denial got out of the way, I knew exactly what I needed to do. It was obvious then as it is now that my lack of exercise and great, too great love of Pepsi were the culprit.

Luckily, I grew up snacking on grapes and cucumbers, and the occassional bag of chips or chocolate bar here and there. I'm not a big fan of fast food, and get to enjoy delicious and healthy Middle Eastern dishes each night for dinner. Point is, my problem wasn't junk food... Pepsi was my junkfood, and I knew I needed to minimize my consumption of it. I guess that's my "disclosure" that this is a case where my problem was somethign I could identify and effectively fix. Some people out there don't have it so easy and I hope that they can get on the right path to health with a whole new lifestyle. A diet alone is just not enough to have lasting results... not just with weight, but with overall health.

Going on... I started with a simple cardio workout video that took a lot of practice to be able to follow, but I did it regularly and saw results within a month. The oodles of Pepsi got reduced to a realistic amount of 2 cans at the absolute most, instead of going cold turkey, and oodles of water. I knew I wasn't going to be Cindy Crawford with these new habits, but they did make a difference that I could see and feel because I set realistic goals for myself. I knew that I couldn't run a mile in the shape I was in, so I settled for a low intensity aerobic exercise to ease me into working out. I was lucky enough to inspire my sister to also get in shape and my father got us a treadmill, which helped me drop a handful of pounds more than I'd already dropped. Now, the treadmill is my main source of cardio workouts. I've been doing strength training exercises using resistance and weights, and I'm in the best shape of my life. People notice that I can run up a flight of stairs without being completely out of breath when I get to the top... I've been complimented on that ability a few times!

I'm still not Cindy Crawford, but I can run a mile without dying, and I can live without Pepsi, though it is a guilty pleasure I keep to a minimum. And most important of all, I will most probably never gain all the weight I lost back, and that's my true success right there. Being realistic is the diet I follow while I enjoy all the foods I want to have in moderation.

My point with this whole schpiel is that a lot of people use diets as a way to lose weight and ignore their overall health, which can be ruined if you eliminate things like Carbs, or simply malnutritioning yourself by being stingy with calories. Health should be your #1 priority and with that, successful weightloss is achieved without the meticulous carb counting and deprivation that diets entail.