My husband is an endless source of health and fitness information to me. It is kind of nice to be able to consult a professional whenever I want about the topic that is always on my mind: weight loss. But I don’t always enjoy his TRAINER’S TIP: it all comes down to CALORIES CONSUMED AND CALORIES BURNED. I’m often trying to find a way to circumvent that reality.
Because of this, the conversation we had about intermittent fasting (aka The 5:2 Diet) is pretty typical. It was Sunday night. I had overindulged all weekend, as usual. So I decided to make my case for fasting as a weight loss strategy.
“It is another fad diet and fad diets are not a long-term solution,” he says.
“Well, it’s really not a fad diet, people have been fasting for centuries. And, actually, fad diets do work,” I counter.
“Stacie, it may work in the short-term but a fad diet is still not a healthy solution. No one can sustain it long-term as a life-style. Just eat less, that is the answer.”
So simple, right? Eat less. I go in search of our honeymoon photo album and bring it back to the kitchen counter.
“Sorry, but I like fad-diets because I do better with set rules not just ‘eat less.’ And they work fast, that is why I find them very appealing,” I say this as I flip through pages of palm trees and beaches. I find the one I’m looking for. It is me on the deck of a catamaran in a pink bikini. My stomach is flat, two rows of abs are visible and my belly button is in the place it was before I had children. My thighs are slim, my deltoids are showing and I’m not even flexing.
“This is the result of a so-called fad diet. This is me on low-carb, I’ve never looked better.”
“You were also working-out for two hours a day and low-carb meant you were consuming fewer calories,” he says in response.
Grrrr…I hate it when he is right.
I wish he had simply lied and said, “You still look like that.”
I also wish I could look at that picture and just be satisfied that I had that one shining moment of extreme physical fitness.
But he didn’t and I’m not. All of this only makes me feel worse about my current state of fitness and lack of motivation to improve it. He’s right, I did work hard back then, much harder than I do now.
I took the picture out of my album and hung it in my closet right next to my scale…but I no longer think of it as evidence that there is a quick fix. It is a reminder of what hard work can accomplish. Darn.
