Dieting woman

One of the most ineffective and curious of all human experiences is the process of dieting. When else do people deprive and discipline themselves for days, weeks, and even months to achieve a certain goal, only to see that goal sabotaged the minute it is achieved? And as if this experience isn’t frustrating enough, many dieters put themselves through this process regularly, enthusiastically losing a few pounds for a short time, only to gain them back. These dieters are draining themselves mentally, spiritually, physically, and emotionally, always searching, spiritually, physically, and emotionally, always searching, yet never quite finding the permanent result they seek. And this frequent, unsuccessful quest creates the undue stress and emotional havoc that dieters know too well.

What exactly is a diet, anyway? People indulge themselves and indulge themselves until they can’t look at themselves in the mirror or until their clothes no longer fit. Then they grudgingly force themselves to “diet” to make up for these past indulgences. It’s like running out and locking your garage after someone has driven off in your car. It’s too late; the damage is done. The “remedy” for these indulgences is usually deprivation, and almost every one of the “diet cures” on the market today requires the dieter to take off pounds at any cost. Diet schemes are an extremely expensive way to lose weight. Many times their real cost is a person’s well-being.

Why don’t diets work? The answer actually is quite simple. What do you think about when you’re on a diet? Just as I did, you are usually thinking about what you’re going to eat when the ordeal is finally over. How can you possibly succeed on your diet when all you are thinking about is food? Depriving yourself is not the answer to healthy, permanent weight loss. It usually causes you to binge later on, which complicates the problem. Deprivation and binging become a vicious cycle, and that’s just one of the many problems with dieting.

Another is that diets are temporary; therefore, the results have to be temporary! Do you want to be permanently slim or temporarily slim? Temporary measures bring about temporary results. Have you ever heard anyone say, “I’ve been on every diet that’s ever come on the market, and nothing seems to work”? Why have they been on every diet? They’ve been on every diet without success because dieting is the wrong approach! Diets fail because of the regimentation involved. Very few of us can be regimented successfully for long when it comes to food. Yet many people, not having an alternative, continue to do what they have always done – diet – because they’ve never been presented with any viable alternative. They continue their search for that one panacea that will end – once and for all – their battle of the bulge.

When we go on a diet, our systems are thrown into turmoil while they try to adapt to a new regimen. They then must readapt to old patterns when the regimen ends. It’s like taking a metal rod and bending it over and over again. Eventually it will become weak and break. If you jerk your body back and forth over and over again by dieting, it will become weak and break down.

But when I attack dieting, I attack an American institution. According to a Louis Harris poll, 62% of all Americans are considered to be overweight. Over 44 million American are considered to be clinically obese; that is, twenty pounds or more overweight. More than half of the nation is dieting or had dieted.

But the fact of the matter is that dieting doesn’t work! It never has, and it never will. The sheer numbers should prove this to you. How many diets have there been over the last twenty years? 50? 100? If they really did work, why would there be a need for an unending chain of new ones? If diets worked, wouldn’t the rate of obesity in this country be decresing each year instead of increasing? In 1982, 15 billion dollars were spent on weight-loss schemes in the US alone. 15 billion dollars! If you had 15 billion dollars to spend, you could spend one million dollars every day for forty years and still have four hundred million dollars left over! If diets wroked, that monumental amount of money would surely put an end to this problem, wouldn’t it? The fact is that that incredible amount is increasing by one billion dollars each year. In spite of the new diets that come and go, the problem is becoming worse.

It is obvious that people have had it with the diet mentality. Confusion and frustration are rampant because most of the diets contradict one another. When the so-called authorities are at odds with one another, what is the layperson to believe? One popular diet says to eat mostly protein and very few carbohydrates. Another equally popular diet says to eat mostly carbohydrates and very little protein. Can they both be right? Another plan says to eat whatever you feel like at the moment and then wash it out with pineapples and papayas. Yet another says to eat a small concoction of whatever you like, but be sure to exercise and be positive. One more says to eat anything you can dream of, just weigh it first. And another says you should adhere to its program for only two weeks at a time. Many diets merely rely on tedious calorie-counting. The most dangerous of all is the latest diet craze that substitutes drugs and “nutritional powders” for real food. The cost to one’s well being from these has yet to be measured. Since we have relied on diets so heavily in the past, and we know they don’t work, what now is our alternative? YOU ARE READING IT!

What we have here is commonsense information that people can use to determine for themselves what is best for them. It is time to take control and responsibility back from those who are arguing about who has the right answer. What we have is a new approach, a new way of thinking, a new way of eating, so that diets become unnecessary and as obsolete as sealing wax. It is obvious that diets are not working, so let’s get rid of them and set ourselves free! Why not find out firsthand that the only permanent results you will see in weight loss will come when you STOP DIETING!

That’s what I did. I finally had had it. I finally gave up dieting. I resolved to find an answer that would make sense to me, that would be reasonable and permanent. After three years of driving myself crazy with diets, it became obvious that what I needed was to learn how to properly take care of my body. What I wanted to find was a course of study that would teach me how to acquire and maintain that slim and healthy body that I knew was inside of me.

One evening at a music festival 2000 miles from home, I overheard 2 rather healthy-looking individuals discussing the idiosyncracies of a friend in Santa Barbara, California, referring to his long dissertations on the beauty of good health. My ears perked up. “Excuse me,” I interrupted, “who is this fellow you are discussing?” In less than 24 hours I was on my way to Santa Barbara. Little did I know that I was on the brink of one of the most remarkable discoveries of my life. I was about to be introduced to a most extraordinary, age-old science known as Natural Hygiene.