Ditch Your Diet in 2012: Retrain Your Brain Instead

You did read the title correctly. It reads "do not" stick to your New Year's resolution to lose weight via dieting. After all, making a resolution to diet hasn't worked yet. Why would you expect it to work in 2012? Obviously, you something has to change. You've heard time and again that doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. Now you might be thinking, "Now what?"
 
Resolve to Quit Dieting in 2012

Diets don't work, but why not? The reason is that they are temporary and restrictive. That's it. Anything that you do and then don't do will only work a short time. Plus, the kind of dieting you probably do is restrictive and causes you to dwell on foods you supposedly can't have. Then when your temporary diet is over then you go overboard. So why don't you just resolve to get off the roller coaster?

Brain/Cravings Research Info From the Biggest Loser

I'm an exercise physiologist and have been trained in detail about how the human body works to gain or lose weight. Still, I'm amazed at what new things there are to discover or theories there are to see proven in real life. Last season of "The Biggest Loser" demonstrated one brain chemistry fact that you'll need to understand if you want to quit dieting for good. They visited a research facility that studied the response of the human brain to food.

When a person of normal or close to normal weight sees food, their brains responded with a low to modest hunger response. When they ate, their brains responded with a modest to high level of pleasure and satisfaction.

Contrast this with the brain activity of an obese person. The more obese person saw food and had a much higher craving or hunger for it. However, they had to eat much more than the normal-size person to get the same amount of pleasure from the food. Eureka!

How to Apply This Info: From Failed Diets to Permanent Weight Loss

The underlying principle is the more healthy your diet is, the more healthy your diet is. In other words, eating a sensible diet in moderation begats more sensible eating. It trains your brain to want less food, reduce cravings, and enjoy the taste of healthier foods. The less you eat sugar, the more sweet things taste that contain sugar.

Yet, the opposite is also true for sugar, salt and fat. That means if you slowly increase or decrease healthy or unhealthy foods in your diet, your brain (sense of taste, hunger response, satisfaction) become retrained according to your adjustments.

Ever cringe and wonder how "health nuts" enjoy the taste of their food? They eat things that you imagine to taste like paste and cardboard, right? The truth is that they very much enjoy the taste of these foods in the same way you enjoy fatty, sweet and salty foods. Eureka!

You! A Future Health Nut?!?!

What this all means is your weight loss roller coaster situation is not a lost cause. You can become a person that actually craves carrot sticks and hummus for a snack instead of potato chips, simply by gradually reducing unhealthy foods while simultaneously increasing healthier ones. That's it. That's the trick. But it's really no trick. It's called lifestyle change and it works.