By Dr. Leslie Van Romer

Welcome aboard to America’s diet-go-round, one which you may have ridden a few dozen times before. You plan. You measure. You count. You weigh. You sacrifice. You deprive. You starve. You crave. You sneak (as if you can really sneak from yourself). You cheat. You guilt. You beat yourself up (you’re a master at that). You lose. You gain. You lose. You gain. You lose. You plateau. You plateau. You plateau and, f-i-n-a-l-l-y, you lose – a pound. Then you go to a friend’s house for dinner and gain two pounds back.

Then you keep gaining, pound by pound, until you are right back where you started, or even heavier. You get depressed, frustrated, and feel like a hopeless failure, one more time. You give up – what’s the point? No matter what you try, nothing works – for good.

You vow to ban diets forever, until that next quick-fix, fat-melting, no-fail diet comes along, appealing to your sense of desperation to be slim and luring you into believing that it would somehow be different from the dozens of diets you tried before. You climb back aboard the diet-go-round, going round and round, with the scale going up and down, and ultimately up – and your hopes spiraling down one more time.

The good news is: you didn’t fail; the diets failed you! Whew – what a relief! Most diets-of-the-day are designed to fail. Let’s sort myth from fact and stop the dizzying diet-go-round madness once and for always.

MYTH: To lose weight, you must control your hunger drive.

FACT: Your hunger drive cannot be controlled. It’s an inborn instinct. Like all instincts – thirst, sleeping, breathing, sex – it keeps you alive and the human race thriving. When you’re hungry (not just bored or sad or upset), do the novel thing – eat! Just choose foods that give you the best nutrition for your calorie buck: fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains (like brown rice, not breads) and beans. To lose weight, you must satisfy your hunger drive, not wage war with it.

MYTH: High protein foods satisfy your hunger drive.

FACT: Of the three major nutrients, carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, carbohydrates sourced by unrefined whole fruits and vegetables satisfy your hunger drive, not the protein found in animal products. Beef, poultry, pork, and fish contain exactly 0% carbohydrates. If you are eating a high protein diet sourced by animal products, you are not getting enough unrefined carbs, responsible for triggering your brain to tell you when to stop eating, which is before your stomach begs for mercy.

MYTH: To lose weight, you must starve yourself with pre-measured, pre-weighed, pre-counted restricted portions.

FACT: To lose weight, you must feel full and satisfied, not starving from baby-size portions. You can only starve yourself so long before that hunger drive takes command with such unstoppable power that you eat anything and everything in sight. If you fill up on the best-for-you foods, you can and should eat as much as you want without fussing, counting, measuring, weighing, depriving, starving, craving, and bingeing – and putting on extra pounds – ever again.

MYTH: To lose weight, you must give up your food favorites forever and ever.

FACT: To lose weight, you don’t "have to" give up anything. Let’s face it. As soon as you proclaim you’re going to give up your favorite food friend, you’re probably tempted to indulge as soon as the next day! Instead of trying to trap yourself in that "I have to give up" box, follow a new strategy. Think addition, not subtraction, and give yourself wiggle room.

Think about which foods you "get to" add to your day instead of which you "have to" give up. Center your meals on your weight warriors and health heroes: whole, fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as whole grains, beans, sprouts, raw, unsalted nuts and seeds, and homemade fruit and vegetable juices. Fill up on these foods first and then eat your traditional not-so-good for you foods. Enjoy your wiggle room, flexibility in your food plan. Just don’t wiggle more than 20% of the time, or you won’t lose that jiggle.

MYTH: Carbs make you fat.

FACT: Who started the rumor that eating fruit, nature’s best, is the same as eating refined white sugar? All carbohydrates are not created equally. There are good carbs and bad carbs. Good carbs are sourced by whole, unrefined plant foods, as in fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes, the best-for-you foods. The good carbs, your body’s most efficient fuel, you ate yesterday give you today’s energy. (No, protein doesn’t provide energy.)

Bad carbs are sourced by refined plant foods, such as white sugar and white flour products: breads, cookies, pastries, doughnuts, cake, candy, desserts, soft drinks, store-bought drinks, and many processed, packaged foods. Bad carbs, high in calories and empty of nutrients, add fat to your fat.

Whether a diet preaches high protein, low fat, low carb, high carb, prepackaged diet meals, diet shakes three times a day, or baby-sized starvation portions, the real truth is that weight gain or loss is ultimately dictated not by any one major nutrient, but by one very simple math equation:

(Calories IN) - (Calories OUT) = The FAT You Wear

MYTH: Cravings are all in your imagination.

FACT: Cravings are real. They can hold you hostage and stuck in a body you don’t want or like. Diets usually deprive you of enough calories and nutrients (especially carbohydrates), intensifying cravings, those uncontrollable urges to eat alluring food faves that are high in calories, sugar, fat, salt, and/or chemicals.

Fresh fruits and vegetables feed you all the nutrients necessary for human health and life, satisfying your hunger drive and minimizing or wiping out cravings, sometimes within the first week.

MYTH: Olive oil is a good fat.

FACT: This will shock you! Did you know that your body makes almost all the fats it needs? Two exceptions: linoleic and alphalinoleic fatty acids, amply sourced by a variety of plant foods. Therefore, it serves no purpose whatsoever to add more fat to the ready-made fat, especially a highly concentrated, refined fat that comes without any nutrition. All added oils, even olive oil, offer you one thing only: calories, and those calories come with a fat price tag – more fat added to your hips, tummy, thighs, and arms. Translation: olive oil a bad fat!

FACT: Look to nature for simple answers. Where do elephants get their necessary fats? Olive, canola, or flax seed oil? Of course not. Plant foods provide all of our essential nutrients, including fats. Grapefruits contain 2% fat, oranges 4%, oatmeal 15%, broccoli 9%, apples 4%, Romaine lettuce 10%, and cabbage 6%.

MYTH: You must eat meat to get enough protein.

FACT: Animal products, even so-called lean ones, come automatically packaged with artery-clogging, disease-causing saturated fat and cholesterol. Beef is 67% fat, skinless, white chicken 38% fat, salmon 48% fat, cheddar cheese 73% fat, eggs 62% fat, and 2% milk 35% fat. As for the cholesterol, chicken, fish, and dairy products are right up there with beef. Meat, dairy, and fish can quickly hike up those fat calories, sabotaging weight loss and weight maintenance.

Question: But don’t we have to eat meat to get enough protein?

Answer: What is protein for? Protein is for lots things, but simply stated, protein is for growth. When do we grow the most? From birth to one year old. When do we need the most protein? From birth to one year old. What is the best food for growing babies? Breast milk. How much protein is in breast milk? 4.5% protein. That’s all!

Not coincidentally, the World Health Organization recommends 4.5% protein in our diets for human health. Oranges have 8% protein, broccoli 45%, Romaine lettuce 36%, brown rice 8 %, kidney beans 26%. Plant foods give us plenty of protein, without the fat and cholesterol that come with animal protein. Two more protein points: 1. Plant protein is not inferior to animal protein. 2. Plant proteins don’t have to be mixed and matched to make a "complete" protein.

FACT: Look to nature for commonsense answers. Where do cows, horses, giraffes, apes, and large elephants get their protein to grow and maintain big, strong muscles? They don’t eat cows, pigs, lambs, chickens, fish, eggs, protein bars, or protein drinks. They eat unrefined plant foods, and not a huge variety at that. If they can get plenty of protein from plants, so can we.

MYTH: You must drink milk and eat cheese to get enough calcium.

FACT: Because dairy products are packed with fat, not to mention other ill-effects, they are not your allies in the weight loss game. Most cheeses are 70% fat or more and even skim milk has 4 to 7% fat.

Question: But don’t we need to eat dairy to get our calcium?

Answer: Where do cows, horses, giraffes, apes, and elephants get their calcium for strong bones and teeth? Plants. They certainly don’t drink milk (once weaned) and another mammal’s milk at that. Cow’s milk is made for baby cows, not for baby people much less grown-up people. The only milk made for baby people is mama’s milk.

FACT: Unrefined plant foods contain all the nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients you need, including calcium. Nature is so smart. Where does calcium come from? The soil. Calcium is dissolved in water in the soil and absorbed by plants. Plants transform inedible, unusable calcium from the soil into usable calcium needed by all mammals. Eating plants is the most direct way of getting calcium, and without the fat, cholesterol, animal protein, milk sugar, hormones, antibiotics, other toxins, and pus (yes, pus!), which can come in dairy products.

Meat and dairy products are choices, not necessities, and can add significant calories to calories and fat to fat.

MYTH: You can exercise off the calories you take in.

FACT: It takes about twelve miles of moderate walking, all at one time to lose one pound of fat. Unless you are a high level athlete, exercising without changing to a more nutrient-dense, calorie-low food plan contributes disappointingly little to ideal weight loss in the average person.

MYTH: A diet is a temporary way of eating to lose weight. Once a weight goal is reached, you can go back to your "normal" way of eating.

FACT: As soon as you abandon a restrictive diet and return to your "normal" eating habits, the weight comes back – with a vengeance. The only way to lose weight permanently is to shift your thinking. As you shift your thinking, you shift your daily choices. As your choices shift, your habits shift. As your habits shift, your behavior patterns and entire lifestyle shift to. At first the shift is effort-full, as with any change, especially deeply conditioned eating habits. After a while, the effort-full magically transforms into effort-less, freeing you from the food trap.

MYTH: If you slip-up, you are weak, lazy, and/or undisciplined, and ultimately a failure.

FACT: That’s ridiculous! If you are a human being residing on this planet, of course you’re going to get off track. It’s tough to change habits that have been ingrained in us since birth. So-called slipping up is totally normal and natural for all of us mere mortals. When you get off track, there’s no need for self-floggings. Let it go – what’s done is done – and get right back on track. Go to the store, get lots of fresh, whole foods, and center your next meals on the best-for-you foods.

Hop off the diet-go-round and shed those pounds forever. Just add, stop, and wiggle. Add and fill up on the best-for-you foods first, stop eating when your brain tells you to, and wiggle – but not too much! With time, patience, and really wanting it, you can step into your body-dream-come-true.

Remember: the only slip-up is to give up, and you are not going to give up!