I’ll admit that I’m a product of marketing in Magazines. Those headlines are really aluring: “Lose 20 lbs before Christmas” or “Sexy moves he wishes you knew”. And I’m old enough (and have bought enough) to know that the articles in these magazines NEVER live up to the hype.
But this time I was intrigued. “The Supermarket Diet” I had to buy it. What could the basis of the Supermarket diet be about? Eating foods from the supermarket will allow you to lose weight as opposed to eating foods at restaurants? Is that only a big DUH to me? or is everyone else clued in on that too?
To my surprise, the supermarket diet was more than just “don’t eat out”. It is a diet book written by Good Housekeeping. It has a 2 week initial phase where participants eat a total of 1200 calories spread across 4 “meals”, then weeks 3 & beyond they may eat 1500 calories.
It amazes me that diets like this are still being produced, and that people are still buying them. In a situation like this, the old adage of “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime” rings true.
I can give you a meal plan, but will you really be successful in your weight loss if you don’t know why those foods have been prescribed? Because we are all the size we are because of the foods we eat. Eat more & grow. Eat less & lose. Once a person leaves the prescribed diet & resumes his/her “normal” eating habits, s/he will return to the size s/he was prior to losing the weight.
And s/he maybe a little bit bigger because whenever we lose weight, we lose a combination of muscle & fat. Muscle is more expensive in terms of calories than fat. 1 lb of muscle burns ~45 calories a day, whereas fat only burns 10. If I lose 1 lb of muscle in the process of dieting, when I resume my normal diet, and eat the same number of calories as before, I will gain all of the “weight” back, However, I will not re-gain that 1 lb of muscle, it will reappear as 4.5 lbs of fat (because muscle burns 4.5 times the amount of fat).
But I digress.
As much as “The Supermarket Diet” is better than eating out, one can really do a lot better – and it doesn’t take a marketing strategy to sell it. The answer is Whole foods. Foods that are found in nature, that are unprocessed & free from human alteration. If you don’t recognize items in the ingredient list, it’s probably not good for you. That’s it. plain & simple. And you know what? you can buy that in the supermarket!