Life's Healthy Menu - The Eating Pattern of Life

Good health, weight loss, overall improved fitness, enhanced esteem - all great rewards from Life's Healthy Menu. Yet, why do so many people fail to take what's theirs?

And why do those dieters that do take what is theirs, regain the lost weight plus additional weight - a failure rate with some studies indicating the rate as high as 98%? What, oh what, are we doing wrong? Why, oh why, can't we get weight loss right?

We know how to diet - simply cut back on food intake and increase activity level - which is much easier said that done. And a good many people do reach their weight loss goals - but the problem is that they rarely retain their new weight, and as mentioned above, when they regain, they tend to gain even more than they lost. Some thoughts to this important matter that may sound familiar....

Just as we all breathe to live, and possess a breathing pattern - both young and old, both thin and fat - all of us also possess an eating pattern - both young and old, both thin and fat.

As infants, our parents set our eating pattern into motion to eventually coincide with their eating pattern. We ate when they ate. We might be playing a fun game outdoors, but when they called, we answered - or later, we wished to goodness that we had as we stood in the corner of our bedrooms.

When we progressed to our teen years, our eating pattern was influenced by our peers. Pizza, nachos, movie popcorn - we ate on a whelm, and rarely did we plan meal time. And the foods that were popular became our foods.

By the time that we reached adulthood, our eating pattern was a snug fit and as we all know, it's very hard to teach an old dog new tricks. So we struggle and we try, and the more that we try to ditch the unwanted weight that keeps coming back to haunt our jeans and once-trim thighs, we can't seem to win the battle - this frustrating Battle of the Bulge.

The reason is that our eating patterns are engrained within. Along life's way, most of us weren't taught that we need to have three meals a day and a couple of small snacks. As a family, we ate around events, socials, schedules and so forth. It was an eating pattern, but not a healthy eating pattern. So it's very difficult to alter the eating pattern.

BUT - just like a pattern that a mother might purchase for her daughter to make that frilly new dress that turns out too small, our eating patterns can be altered. They can be reworked, adjusted and hemmed so that when we reach our weight loss goals, the weight that we lost won't come back.

Once the weight is lost, the dieter should take a critical look at their eating pattern and digest what they have learned through dieting and use that knowledge in their daily diet going forward so that they never have to lose weight again, for they now have a Pattern for Weight Loss - a Healthy Eating Pattern.