Over 13 years ago, when I decided to lose weight permanently, the word was out: Diets don’t work.

In 1996, there was a kind of confusion as to why that was true. I set out to understand permanent weight loss because I knew that gave me the ONLY opportunity to achieve it.

It’s not surprising, when I give a workshop or teach a class, that my clients don’t understand how the body loses weight. It’s no guarded secret. But we simply don’t teach it here in America. It’s not fast. It’s not sexy. But I say the hell with that, you can be fast and sexy later, once you’ve taken the time to make real change in your life.

So, here we go. Here’s the first reason diets almost never lead to permanent weight loss:

Diets focus on food and being fat.
Food and being fat are NOT the problem.
Food and excess weight are just symptoms.

Diets focus our attention on food with their rules, counts, and arbitrary “values.” They are worse than the fast food commercials on “The Biggest Loser” (yes, media executives and advertising gurus programmed your butt in front of the television – they know you are watching and they know exactly what you’ll do when you see that Burger King commercial after you start feeling bad about not losing 463 pounds this week like contestant #2).

Food is exactly what we SHOULD NOT be thinking about if we’re interested in changing our size!

In fact, I often say that, as I lost 70 lbs, food became less and less important in my life. That’s because I got a life instead.

So, how, with a food chart or a calorie counter or printout of “acceptable food”, are we going to let food recede into the background where it belongs? If everything in life screams “control food”, we have no option but to focus on it, sometimes to the extent that it drives us crazy. (That is, by the way, when we abandon our efforts and sabotage it all.)

And, have you ever noticed, the minute you start a new “diet”, a multitude of invitations occur? Or a pot luck or party at work pops up? Or donuts seem to be everywhere?

As we run around, thinking about controlling food, we are actually calling more food into our lives. That’s insanity.

After a while, we become foodcentric, foodaholics, and even foodpsychic. We become so sensitive, we can actually sense food right around the corner. It becomes caretaker, lover, best friend and mommy.

The sad part for me was that my world shrank as I focused more and more on food and dieting. Have you experienced that?

Take a step back.

Breathe.

Food is energy. Like gas for your car. How often do you think about gasoline or visiting the gas station? That’s as often as you need to think about food… when the tank gets low. No more.