Self-control, a key factor to a successful diet

Edwin J. Viera, Columnist

The diets that I have seen people on are quite disturbing, since they disrupt the entire flow of the human body.

I once tried the juice diet, and all it did was heighten my other senses. That’s actually the reason that I stopped that diet, because I could smell someone eating fried chicken from the other side of a train car.

Being without cable has given me a new diet plan, though. I call it the “Seinfeld Diet.” I watch the Seinfeld Remix on TBS while I’m on the treadmill, and I will stay on there longer because I just want to watch the show.

I couldn’t help but wonder, do diets really need all the pain and suffering that goes into them?

Halloween has come and gone, and many people are working on their piles of candy that they generously scored from other people’s homes. I know that I’m enjoying my stash of Reese’s cups and Kit Kats.

The next major holiday is Thanksgiving, which people celebrate by putting on a pair of sweatpants and eating until the elastic waistband snaps (not really).

Around the holidays, the diet plan starts to go down the tubes. I know from personal experience that a diet plan around the holidays is hard to keep up due to all of the pies, ham, turkey, and luscious meals. It’s more than the market, the plate and the button on our pants can bear.

Then comes the saving grace of the holidays, New Years Eve. This is the day when people see the error of their eating ways, and start the age-old tradition of coming up with resolutions to follow in the New Year. The biggest one is to lose weight, which allows gyms to see some of their biggest revenue increase on January 2nd.

January 3rd is when the gyms are practically empty once again. This ritual has gone on for many years with less than satisfactory results.

The real question is: why does the cycle seem to repeat itself? People set their goals, but it’s so hard to live up to them.

I’ve gone through the diet cycle to see many of my attempts turn into failures bigger than M. Night Shyamalan’s film, “The Last Airbender.”

Another diet attempt people make is anything that cleanses the body. I tried this with the juice diet and prunes.

The prune diet cleanses the body, and not much else. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I soon figured out that it was too much running between the bathroom and my bedroom. That was the last time I did that.

People go through many diets because of the inevitable thing that surrounds the world in evil, temptation. Diets require people to actually stay with the program, but they usually require such strange rules. My roommate Kevin has been on such a strict diet for most of his life he gets bad breakouts when he eats chocolate. That translates into more Halloween candy for me.

Weight loss is simple. It just involves one of the scariest words that you can ever utter: commitment. All diets take commitment; otherwise, they just don’t work. The diet is a hard thing to stick to, but it can be done.

All it takes is a little self-control to stay away from the cakes, the pies, the ice cream sundaes or any of those things that can make a diet go awry. One crucial part of dieting is whether you’re eating because you’re hungry, or because there is food nearby. Emotional hunger takes a lot of control.

Diets are easy, but all the so-called “pain and suffering” stems from the fact that following the rules of the diet is difficult. Sure, in the first few days it gets difficult, but after a while you start to realize that it’s sort of a lifestyle. All you have to do is focus on the fact that you may gain a new sense of confidence.

Just remember: stay away from the prunes!

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