I’ve been thinking a lot about diet lately. Perhaps its because I get a lot of questions this time of year as summer approaches and people realize they’re likely to start exposing more of their bodies over the coming months.

I’m sure all of us have heard the (cringeworthy) phrase, “abs are made in the kitchen.” While this isn’t entirely true, a very large part of it is.

People ask me all the time, “what should I eat.” My usual response is “how do you want to look?” I believe this is an important question as there are few things more subjective than what different people find attractive.

The first thing to do is to make a healthy decision. Please, I beg of you, don’t follow a twelve week diet programme. I’ve seen too many times what happens in the months that follow the ‘goal weight’ completion – men and women almost always plummet back to a worse position than they started off in. Concentrate on a way you can live consistently.

It won’t come as a surprise to anyone reading this that if you cut out sugar, wheat, starch and alcohol, you will lose weight. This is a rule. It works every time. But people seem to hate rules for some reason, and even more so when it comes to food. We all try to bend or cheat the rules, but unfortunately where diet is involved the results of adhering to them or not are always reflected by the response of your body.

I recently made the choice to cut sugar out of my diet. Personally I hated the fact that I craved sugar after dinner. I’ve never smoked but I can imagine that craving I had on the tip of my tongue being very similar to that of a smoker who craves the touch of a cigarette on his or her lips. Sugar is addictive – another rule. If you want to eat sugar, then you should, but know exactly where this path will take you and the results it leads to.

Far be it for me to preach to anyone about diet – I do eat bread and starch, but that’s a decision I make to keep my body the way it is. I know the outcome of this choice, and that’s what I wanted to get across in this piece – make a choice and be accountable for it. You made it, no one else.

You have chosen to eat a certain way, exercise a certain way, and look a certain way. Accept responsibility for that, and don’t feel guilty about any of it. You like sugar? Great. You like to drink alcohol? Awesome. Those are your choices, but just remember that rules are rules, and they will have the outcome they have always had. You know what happens if you follow them just as you know what happens when you break them.

Finally, this quote from Logan Gelbrich on the thing people hate hearing the most when asked about diet – that being that it requires personal responsibility;

“Do you notice how much you like rules when it comes to nutritional advice, for example? “But, are potatoes good? Or, are they bad?”

“Potatoes are potatoes, folks. As it turns out, at some point you’ll need to take on some personal responsibility with nutrition, because diets with rules are disengaged experiences that lack responsibility and are destined to fail. To be successful in the grey areas, you’ll need to grab your tool belt and get engaged in your own decisions.”

Ditch the rules and step up to the plate with your own two feet.“

JW.

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