I’ll be starting up a new diet in the next day or so. I’ve come to the point now where I’m losing as much weight inbetween the fad diets as I am when I’m on them, so at this point I’m purely doing the fad diets for shits and giggles. Depending on the diet the quality and frequency of the shits may vary, but the giggles are always hearty and plentiful.

One very positive benefit of all the diets I’ve tried is that my willpower has been exercised to a point where sticking to a diet, or anything I’m consciously trying to commit to, is no longer an issue. If I have to, for instance, only eat bananas for a couple days, my will takes over and it’s not all that difficult. It’s not pleasurable, by any means, but it’s not hard either.

I think the key to the whole thing is this, you have to learn to make discipline your ally. We spend a lot of time fighting the restrictions we place on ourselves. We reflexively fight discipline even when it’s self-discipline. It’s weird, but it’s also something that’s so obvious we never even thing about it. You might think, “I want to walk 2 miles a night.” And you’re physically capable of it, you can make the time to do it, you don’t even mind walking that much, and yet you can’t get yourself to go do it. It should be weird that we can’t get ourselves to do something we want ourselves to do, but it’s not. In fact, we tend to get impressed when somebody actually does something they wanted to do. “Can you believe that Carl actually flosses his teeth every night? I don’t know how he does it. He’s more machine than man.”  So, I think the key is to get in the mindset where you embrace your own self-discipline. Of course, the question is how do you do that and I’m not really sure about that yet. I’m still working out the details. I know I’ve come to that place in my mind, but I’m not sure just yet what brought me here.

One thing I know is that you have to be really careful of what diet books you read and ideas you follow. I was looking in the bookstore this weekend for a new fad diet and I noticed that all of the diet books seemed to be about how to compensate for your weakness. “We know you’re a fat slob,”  the books say, “so here are some tips and tricks to deal with your weak, defeated soul. Here are some easy  but effective exercises and here are some foods you can eat that will keep you full without too many calories. Because if the exercising isn’t easy and you don’t constantly feel sated, then you’re going to go out and swallow some McDonalds extra value meals because you are too fat and weak to handle temptation, deprivation, and strain.” The books tell you that you need to remove any bad or unhealthy food in your house so that you can live in a “no-fail” environment. But wouldn’t you rather be someone who can just choose not to eat your spouse’s cookies rather than someone who only doesn’t eat them because they aren’t in the household? I think instead of trying to make things easier on ourselves we need to constantly challenge ourselves so that we can be confident we will make the right choices regardless of the situation.

• Go to your favorite fast-food restaurant, walk inside, go up to the counter, buy a bottled water then leave.
• Buy a bag of potato chips, sit down in front of the tv, open the bag, eat six chips, fold up the bag and put it back in the cupboard. Then forget about them. If you can’t forget about them, pretend to forget about them, it’s all the same. Don’t eat another chip from that bag, let the rest of the family eat them or let them go stale.
• Bake a batch of your favorite cookies, set one aside for yourself, wrap the rest in tinfoil and give them to a friend or neighbor.

Doing these types of things will be much better for you than swapping skim milk for 2% milk or buying those pills that “trap the fat” in your body so you can’t digest it. You’re exercising your willpower and you’ll be able to see yourself as someone who has ability to make these types of decisions for your yourself in the future, regardless of the situation.

You might say, “But I’m weak, I can’t do those things.” Well, then you’re F’d, I don’t know what to tell you. If you think you’re too weak to control yourself then you probably will screw up any diet you try. I think it’s very unlikely in anything except the very worst chemical addictions that a person is not ultimately in control of the choices he/she makes. I suggest you try changing now. It’s a good time of year for it. Autumn is coming. We’ve only had a couple of cool nights in New York City so far, but you can tell the weather is changing. I can’t wait because it’s my favorite season. It’s a good time of year to redefine yourself if you feel you need to. They say that autumn is the springtime of the mind*, and I’ve always found that to be true. I’ve rambled on a bit here, I hope some part of what I said resonated with someone.

* Well, I just googled that phrase and apparently they don’t always say it. Maybe only I do. Regardless, it’s still the truth for me.