My speech 9 for Toastmasters on dieting ( a bit LONG)

[Guest guest]

Hi All, I have been a member of this list for a few years and I cannot stress how grateful I am to be part of this supportive group of individuals. I would like to share with you a speech I presented to a

local Toastmasters Club a couple of years ago. The speech was on the insanity of dieting and Intuitive eating. As I gave the speech, in front of about 15 other Toastmasters, I could feel everything that I had written. I just barely finished it before I broke down and tears were running down my face. It is a bit long and it is written as a speech so the grammar is off… please excuse that.I have omitted some material and references but those are available as I did research the web for my material. I use large font as I give a speech so that I can glance at my notes as I give a speech. I wanted to share this with you...

********* Title: Stop the insanity! Lose 10 Ibs in 10 weeks. Guaranteed to work…..sign up for free gym membership and your life will change.. keep away from bad foods…..they will kill you!!! And on and on.. Do you know of someone or even live with someone that is on a diet? You don’t have to answer this loudly… Have you ever heard of weight watchers, Slim fast, Atkins, LA Weight loss, Weigh Down, Herbal magic systems, Craig., No diet diet, cabbage soup diet, Dr. Bernstein, lemonade diet. the 30 day diets….what about the pills that guarantee to dissolve the fat, to curb your appetite, to flush your system.. you get the picture…..The picture that I would like to leave with you tonight, is picture of a

scene or a thought or feeling that is free of the insanity of diets and dieting. I hope to persuade you to change your view point or at least consider the idea of stopping the diet insanity. My speech today is geared towards those diets or dieters that I would call recreational dieters or serial dieters. It is not intended to replace the advice of your physician, you are encouraged to talk to your physician if, by the end of the evening I have persuaded you to stop the insanity. Fellow Toastmasters, diets do not work in real life!! There have been numerous studies contacted, we see examples of failed diets in ourselves, or families, our colleagues.

We watch and wait as the serial dieter embarks on yet another new fad diet…. Only to fall off the wagon 4 weeks, 8 weeks later…. Fellow Toastmasters diets and dieting does not work!!! Diets are designed on the premise of eat fewer calories, control your eating, count your calories…and that, is not sustainable! In an article on the internet, it said that over 55 million Americans will go on a diet in 2008 alone. A total of over 30 billion dollars a year will be spent on weight loss products. Another study shows that 95% of the people who go on a diet gain

it all back in five years and even add on a few more pounds. I know this for a fact because I have been there… My purpose today is to persuade you to consider another point of view, to drop the dieting mentality, and to adopt a health relationship with yourself, your life and your food. Why do we diet? Why are we so obsessed as a society with dieting? Especially the female

gender? The concept of dieting must have begun when they first started using young teenage girls as runanway models. The mass media, newspapers, TV, Internet took on the ‘fad’ and set off to persuade us all.. both men and women that skinny, women were indeed beautiful. Remember Marilyn Monroe, Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Mona ..classic beautiful; women in their times. These were voluptuous, full figured curvy women. They were no smaller than a size 12 or 14. How then do we perceive women of size 0 or size 2 as being the accepted standard of a beautiful female body? Why do we continue to buy into that image? Fellow toastmasters, as one of those easily persuaded members of the public, I have indulged in a few of these diets. I remember going on my first diet at the age of 18 or 19. I was not overweight.. I was a good size 10 – 12 easily maintained but still felt that I had to go on diet. At the time there was no internet or email so most of the information can via word of mouth. The diet was called the pineapple diet. That is all I ate, for breakfast, for lunch and then one boiled egg with a tomato for dinner. I lost weight , lots of it, but in two weeks I went back to eating as I did before, I could not sustain that diet. Weight watchers was one diet plan I did. I was on it..for a month, went to get weighed once week, counted my calories and points. Had half a banana and half a cup of cereal for breakfast…since vegetables were considered free…I carried bags and bags of peeled carrots that I devoured to feed my hunger. You know what happens when you eat lots and lots of fibre!! I was back to my regular eating after one month.. and because I had missed out on most desserts, that is

exactly what I concentrated on….the pounds I lost mysteriously appeared accompanied by a few more… I was also on the Atkins, herbal systems, I drank Chinese slimming teas, tried acupuncture which was very expensive, I also exercises four times a week when I was on diet.… Craig.. lasted one month.. I purchased from Craig

food that cost about 200 dollars a week. The meals were all measured out and packaged.. three meals and three snacks. I was good the first two weeks. I followed the program faithfully. Week 3 and 4 I ate all my allotted weekly food in two days. I feel off the wagon..and on..and on.. I was a classic yo-yo dieter.. Each time I went on a diet, I failed to maintain the diet and each time this happened, I

would hate myself more and more… in fact it has been said that people that do fail experience self loathing, depression, a sense of despair, loneliness…all these I experienced at one time or another. I wish I had know that it was not my fault, it was not my will power and stopped blaming myself but it was that diet that were failing me. On Dec. 31 of the year 2005, while watching the New Year’s Ball drop at Times square New York on TV, I took a moment and took stock of my life. Each Dec. 31, I would make a resolution, to loss weight, to be a size 8 or 10 by the summer. This time I decided not to make that resolution. I decided to work at being

me…I will do the exact opposite of what I would have done. I went through my wardrobe and removed any piece of clothing that did not fit. I had dresses and blouses I had bought a size smaller or had shrunk in the laundry. I collected filled three big garbage bags. Next day I took them all to Goodwill store. As 2006 was ushered in I felt wonderful , free and very very scared.….because for the first time in very many years, I was not going to go on a diet. Before the night of Dec. 31 , 2005, I first heard about intuitive eating, driving home one night, listening to 630 CHED talk radio show host interview a Professor Hawks, a BYU professor of health science from Young

Brigham University. He was talking about the concept of Intuitive eating. “teaches you how to create a healthy relationship with your food, mind, and body--where you ultimately become the expert of your own body.†I went to the library and borrowed the book Intuitive Eating by…….. Tribole and Elyse Resch I read the book twice. What is IE? It is a state of being of mind, or relating to food at the basic level as it was meant to be. Have you ever seen a wild animal eat food?. Take the squirrel for example, it collects its nuts and stored them to eat over the winter season.. Take the king of the jungle, the lion, it will hunt its prey, eat the choicest bits, usually the heart, and leave the rest of the carcass for other smaller animals. And after that it will lay down in the shade and digest its meal. now I have not heard of a squirrel or a lion dying of eating too much food. They view food as life giving. These animals eat intuitively. They listen to their bodies, understand the hunger cues. Small children do also have intuitive eating patterns. When left alone,

the child will eventually eat when hungry.. however as parents, worried that the child is not eating will try to force feed the child. Or withhold some type of food as a reward. With intuitive eating, we go back to the basics. Understanding our body, respecting our food, removing negative thoughts of bodies and food. Fellow Toastmasters. My name is a and I am a recovering serial dieter. It has been 2 and a half years since my last diet… since then I have thrown away all my diet books and magazines, I have thrown away my scales. I refuse to weigh myself. I loving and happily shop for clothes in a size that fits my body. I eat when I want, what I want, at anytime. I have discovered that I really do not like chocolate unless it is in form of cake, I do not like doughnuts, I do not like candy, potato chips don’t taste as good as they did when I was dieting. Ice cream.. eeh…I will eat it because it is there.. I used to buy ice-cream by the pail.. every three days.. when I was in between diets. Social

gatherings are now a source of joy for me, I no longer worry about calories, fat or non fat, good or bad.. it is a journey a for me…as I journey, I enjoy the experience…. I do the fun things that I did not do before…..like wearing a swimsuit, going swimming. Since that New Year’s eve, I have signed up for ballroom dance lessons, I am traveling and spending money on myself.. I took up Bikram or hot yoga seriously.. with hot yoga, participants are wearing the minimum possible as it is a heated room temperature of 100 degrees and very humid. It is okay that the person next to me is a size three times smaller that I am or bigger than I am.. because this is me, I am me… I breath, I eat,.. therefore I am.. Fellow Toastmasters consider sharing with your loved ones my journey to the land of intuitive eating, to the freedom of being at peace with your body, connecting your mind and having a loving

wonderful relationship with your food. Lets stop the insanity! My name is a and I am a recovering serial dieter. ************************