Luckily these phases are over in three months and are followed by an equal and opposite reaction. There is no one who eats more fries and drinks more beer than the person who has recently abandoned a diet. It seems to me, denying yourself just builds up a lard and booze lust that will not be satiated until you're 5kg fatter than you were at the start.
It's well documented that you'll probably put on more weight after you leave your diet than you will lose during your diet. So why would you bother? Logically, it would be better to give up before you begin.
If you eat and drink what you like, you'll gain weight in an orderly fashion. The binge fitness person is the hare in a tortoise race. Sprinting, showing off, and ultimately ending up the fattest.
You want pies? Eat pies. Don't worry about it. Play your natural game. Stop telling yourself off.
A binge abstainer is far worse than an everyday binger. At least a binge binger makes other people feel good about themselves.
It is of course possible to make a massive lasting change. A small number of people turn their lives around completely.
If you can pull off lasting fitness then good for you. You will be thin and beautiful and full of energy. You might even live longer.
All I am saying is, it's way more likely you will revert to your old ways after a few months. Then pile on more than you lost.
Worse, you will have missed out on months of good times, kilograms of chips and litres of drink doing it.
Better to give up before you start. Let yourself off the hook. You will never get back those wasted hours at the gym.
You're probably not that fat anyway. Moving goal posts of research have podgy people thinking they are morbidly obese.
In reality you can be fat and fine. Love handles aren't a death sentence. They are monuments to fun.
Most gym going and healthy eating isn't even fitness-based. It's about looking good. You need to ask yourself. How good-looking do I need to be? Isn't it better to be slightly less good looking and not at the gym? Personally I'd be happy to slip down to a four on the good-looking scale if it means I could eat more.
Are you really going to brutalise yourself for the pleasure of other people's eyeballs?
People waste so much money and time trying to please others. Look at what's thrown out in the inorganics. Every second pile features a piece of abandoned fitness equipment. You can guarantee the owner's abdominal muscles are far worse now than they were before they bought the machine.
If only those people had given up before they started. Money saved, environmental damage minimised. Not to mention less work for the poor bastards who have to clean up the junk.
Giving up has turned my life around. I used to look in the mirror and think 'go to the gym, you fat bastard'. Now I don't look in the mirror at all. That in itself saves me 20 minutes before work.
There are a lot of diets out there. Fasting, no carbs, no sugar, no booze. If you want to give them a go, best of luck.
Just ask yourself the question. Will I keep this up for the rest of my life? If the answer is no, then you probably have a 5kg weight gain waiting for you in three months' time.
Slow and steady weight gain wins the race.
I have given up completely and I am much happier for it. Why not give it a go? It takes no effort at all.
