Butter tastes better than Margarine,
but I ate Margarine for most of my life because it was supposed to be better for me.
It wasn't.

Wouldn't the supermaket be small without those rows of cereal, candy, cookies, chips, mixes for cakes and cookies, sodas and other sugared drinks?  Looking at this with a positive focus ... This makes shopping more exercise. I might even burn 5 extra calories.
HooRay for that one piece of sugarless gum.   

A farmer wants the donkey to take the load and travel.
But, the donkey does not move.
He hits the donkey with a stick, but it still won’t move.
So, he ties a carrot to the stick  and holds it in front of the donkey, just out of reach.
The donkey wants to eat the carrot and moves forward.
At the same time, the carrot also moves by the same distance.
The donkey cannot eat the carrot, till the farmer reaches his destination.
 

Here is the Carrot used in Intermittent fasting.

“Just get through today, and tomorrow you can eat what you want.”

Unfortunately it isn’t the truth … unless what you WANT tomorrow is merely what a naturally thin person consistently eats in order to maintain a normal weight.

Successful self-discipline requires plenty of carrot as well as stick.
The stick without the carrot can be used for punishment, but as a reward that stick is ineffective.

Success with intermittent fasting ... (or even with other diets involving intermittment times of calorie restriction – such as: restricted weekdays with unrestricted weekends) ... requires the low-calorie eating days to be balanced together with days of eating at maintenance calorie level … in other words, the restrictive days need to occur alongside the kind of “healthy” moderate diet that is followed by the naturally thin.

This requirement actually makes intermittent fasting more challenging than many other diets, and, for all but the most dedicated, even more unappealing and more impossible to follow.

If I WANTED only “normal” amounts of “healthy foods”, being fat would never have been a problem for me, and a Binge/Fast eating pattern rarely proves to be an effective weight-loss strategy.

The promise of days of unlimited, unrestricted eating is what lures one to the diet, but for most people this is really only a stick with the false promise of a carrot. Here’s a statement by one of the people who have found Intermittent Fasting a personal success:

“What I found was that my appetite gradually changed as I adapted to fasting and I no longer needed to binge-eat on up days. I wasn't a saint exactly but I was more restrained and weight-loss was steady and noticeable.”

People who succeed at non-fasting, but still intermittently restricted diets, such as the No S Diet, ..(which has restricted eating for 5 days, and unrestricted eating for 2 days)...  make similar claims. They indicate that after time, maybe 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, etc… their weekday restrained eating habits bleed over onto weekends, and they no longer wish to overeat even though the diet “allows” them to do so.

Allegedly … eventually, …. the fat person’s body and appetitive will adapt, and the formerly fat person will naturally choose to eat in a way that will maintain a “normal” person&r...

I count calories consistently.  I weigh and measure my food, and I put it into a computer food journal every day.  I've been doing that since September 20, 2004, which, as of today, makes 3081 consecutive days.

My computer records show that, each year, during the past several years, that my AVERAGE daily calories are around 1050, and yet, over that time,  my weight has crept about 10 pounds up, ... a few pounds a year.  This is despite my best efforts.  I am an older, short, sedentary woman.  According to the Mifflin formula ... which is considered by most experts to be the most accurate... my RMR (resting metabolism rate) should be around 1020 calories, adding an activity factor of 1.2 for sedentary... brings it up to around 1225. So, 1225 is the amount of calories that an average woman with my current BMI, age, and activity would need to maintain her weight. 

See my previous article: Do Calories Matter? which addresses the calorie issue in detail.

One of the things that I find most annoying is being told by fellow dieters or "experts" that I'm eating "too few" calories, and that I need to eat more.  When anyone makes that overused mythical statement about the necessity of a "1200 calorie minimum", I want to poke a sharp stick into their eye.

Bodies are different ages, sizes, sexes, with different activity levels and the word "AVERAGE" means that there are people whose caloric needs are both ABOVE and BELOW that number. Also, and this is what this article addresses:... no matter how carefully a person counts calories, it is absolutely impossible to get a truly accurate count. 

I do the best I can to be accurate, but research shows ... and I've personally discovered ... that calorie counting mistakes are almost always Under the number, not Over the number.  I love food, and I love eating.  I want to be accurate, but I also want as much of that food as I can reasonably eat, and this involves the issue of my appetite as well as the issue of my nutritional needs.

So, first, I realize that no matter how hard I try, I will sometimes make personal mistakes when I judge the amounts of my own food portions.

Next, my calorie counting is based on the information I receive from others about the food I'm eating.  All of that information is based on AVERAGES.  Even raw fruits and vegetables have slightly different calorie counts, depending on their stage of ripeness. The fat content in meats, fish, chicken etc. varies as well.  Most of the food sold in the United States contain food labels.  I input the food label information into my computer software program, and ALLEGEDLY ... when I measure the amounts of that food correctly ... I will have an accurate calorie count.  Unfortunately, this is untrue because the labels are often inaccurate. 

Regulations about the labeling of food developed to insure that the person who was buying the food received fair value for their money. The seller had to keep their "thumb off the scale"...

What does “Healthy” eating
really mean?

Here’s an amusing article I recently found posted on Northwest Edible Life, (a home gardening blog).

The Terrible Tragedy of the Healthy Eater
            by Erica - Northwest Edible Life - August 1, 2012

I know you. We have a lot in common. You have been doing some reading and now you are pretty sure everything in the grocery store and your kitchen cupboards is going to kill you.

Before Your Healthy Eating Internet Education:

I eat pretty healthy. Check it out: whole grain crackers, veggie patties, prawns, broccoli. I am actually pretty into clean eating.

After Your Healthy Eating Internet Education:

Those crackers – gluten, baby. Gluten is toxic to your intestinal health, I read it on a forum. They should call those crackers Leaky Gut Crisps, that would be more accurate. That veggie burger in the freezer? GMO soy. Basically that’s a Monsanto patty. Did you know soybean oil is an insecticide? And those prawns are fish farmed in Vietnamese sewage pools. I didn’t know about the sewage fish farming when I bought them, though, really I didn’t!

The broccoli, though..that’s ok. I can eat that. Eating that doesn’t make me a terrible person, unless….oh, shit! That broccoli isn’t organic. That means it’s covered with endocrine disrupting pesticides that will make my son sprout breasts. As if adolescence isn’t awkward enough.

And who pre-cut this broccoli like that? I bet it was some poor Mexican person not making a living wage and being treated as a cog in an industrial broccoli cutting warehouse. So I’m basically supporting slavery if I eat this pre-cut broccoli. Oh my God, it’s in a plastic bag too. Which means I am personally responsible for the death of countless endangered seabirds right now.

I hate myself.

Well, shit.

All you want to do is eat a little healthier. Really. Maybe get some of that Activa probiotic yogurt or something. So you look around and start researching what “healthier” means.

That really skinny old scientist dude says anything from an animal will give you cancer. But a super-ripped 60 year old with a best-selling diet book says eat more butter with your crispy T-Bone and you’ll be just fine as long as you stay away from grains. Great abs beat out the PhD so you end up hanging out on a forum where everyone eats green apples a...

Proposed Behavior

Every time we get a craving for
crispy, starchy, salty, or sweet products
(french fries, potato-corn-or-other-veggie-or-soy-chips, crackers, cereals, snack-bars,
candy-bars, cookies and other bakery products etc.)

or sugar-infused-flavored water
(sugared-colas, sweet-teas, and sugared energy drinks etc.),

we should remind ourselves
that the item is being peddled by an industry 
which is not only selling us food devoid of nutritional value
while trying to deceive us into believing it will promote our health,
but is ALSO actively striving to get us hooked on it.