A month ago I wrote about the simple diet. It’s a very straightforward diet that revolves around eating more often in smaller portions. It’s very simple and it can work very well if you follow it. However, after a month of being on this diet I have some unpleasant results to share.
It didn’t work. At all. In fact I gained a little weight, though that isn’t exactly the fault of the diet. You see, I’m a pretty average guy when it comes down to it. At times my willpower is very good. At times I can make myself exercise regularly, other times I don’t do so well.
This past month was one where I basically didn’t follow the diet for more than one or two days a week. I ate out a few times a week. I only hit the gym maybe once a week, if that. Worst of all, I started drinking pop more often and snacking on my wife’s amazing homemade brownies and cookies. I pretty much didn’t give this diet a fair shake at all.
The reasons are pretty much the same reasons that every diet fails. I’m lazy, I’m busy, I just don’t feel motivated. It’s pretty sad, but in the end the results don’t lie. I failed at the simple diet.
My failure in following this diet brings up an interesting point I think is worth discussing. Did I fail the diet or did the diet fail me? In my opinion every diet should be designed with the average person in mind and should account for both success and failure on the part of the dieter. In this case I think most of the blame should land squarely on my shoulders. I failed the diet moreso than the diet failed me.
However, the simple diet does have some shortcomings. The biggest shortcoming is figuring out what to eat. In a sense, the diet is too simple this way. Sometimes freedom is a bad thing. In this instance I tend to think that the simple diet needs refinement. Knowing what you should eat as part of the diet I think would help me make fewer bad decisions, because I’d feel like I have limited options.
The other major shortcoming is food preparation. Eating say four or five times a day takes preparation. I didn’t do the food prep needed each day to eat the right kind of smaller meals. I tried frozen dinners to a certain level of success, but they never did a good job of keeping me full. Soup worked a bit better and was easy to prepare at work, but it gets old. Ultimately, the simple diet needs a way to simply bring small meals with you to work that keep you content and not craving food.
At the end of the day, even with the diet’s shortcomings I know I could have had success on the simple diet. I just didn’t have the willpower and the attention span to stick with it. The bulk of the failure is my own and that can’t be denied.
If you are looking at a diet to try, the simple diet could still work for you, but I’m not sure if you’ll see the intended results unless you can overcome the diet’s weaknesses as well as your own personal weaknesses. Sometime I intend on trying the simple diet again, but I’ve got some others to test before it gets another shot.
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