Did you know that healthy eating is better than dieting for successful, long-term weight loss? In fact, in order to create a long-term healthy lifestyle for yourself, you need to ditch those diets! Dieting is a short-term 'solution' to a lifelong 'problem'. After all, we need to eat three times a day for the rest of our lives. So, if you are serious about your health and your weight, you need to think about how you can eat healthily, three times every day, for the rest of your life!

In the U.S. alone, the diet-industry is now worth a whopping $20 billion! There are a lot of shareholders out there hoping you don't develop a long-term healthy eating lifestyle that is enjoyable, sustainable and based on real, natural, healthy food! They want you to keep spending your hard-earned cash on their short-term diets and diet products, that will have your weight going up and down like a yo-yo as you hop on and off one diet after another.

Many of these diet products and systems actually cause you to put on weight once you stop using them. They have nothing to do with healthy eating. Whether it is the 'cabbage soup' method, or some powdered mixture, these diets are based on food that is pretty repulsive, so that you eat very little of it. Therefore, you are not taking in sufficient calories for your body to function normally.

Your body is programmed by evolution to panic in this situation and goes into 'starvation mode'. This means that you burn muscle, not the fat you want to lose! Then your entire metabolism slows down in order to preserve what energy your body still holds in its fat reserves. Then, when you come off the diet and go back to normal eating, you pile on the weight because your metabolism is slower than it should be.

You may mistake this for meaning that the diet worked, because you put on weight when you stopped it. And so you become hooked on yo-yo dieting, never really sorting out a healthy eating lifestyle that you can live with day in day out.

It probably took you up to thirty years to put on three stone. Do you really think you can lose it permanently in three months? You might, but in another few months, you'll have piled it back on again.

To lose weight and keep it off permanently, it is much better to build a healthy eating lifestyle for yourself that you can stick to, for the rest of your life, not just the immediate future.

Have a good breakfast so you don't snack during the day. Cut out fatty sugary treat foods and snack on seeds, nuts and fruit. Bulk up your meals with lots of healthy veggies. Switch to wholegrain breads, cereals, pastas etc. These will fill you up quicker than the white, refined ones, which have a habit of going straight to your waistline and piling on tummy weight! Cut out take-outs and ready-meals. Learn how to cook some basic quick and easy healthy meals and get into the routine of preparing your own food. Make exercise part of your everyday life. And finally, be happy and don't obsess about food. Food and healthy eating should be a normal, natural part of life, not something we do to extremes and endlessly think about!

So, ditch the diets and build yourself a healthy lifestyle instead. And remember my motto "Healthy eating is enjoyable!" It really is! Make it enjoyable for yourself and then you will stick to it! Hey, it's all about old-fashioned common sense!

*Always follow the advice of your doctor or health professional.

Copyright. 2008. A. de Blaca.

Afric de Blaca is a website publisher and writer on holistic living and healthy eating. Visit her website to pick up your Free Healthy Eating Workbook. Learn everything you need to know to begin your healthy-eating lifestyle and never have to diet for weight loss again! Tips and tricks for busy people on how to shop, plan and cook healthy meals. Also features recipes, healthy grocery lists, healthy kids food, inspiration, encouragement and so much more!