Forget dieting; change habits

By DAMON ARTHUR
SCRIPPS HOWARD
Pat Garton gave up trying to diet and lost 32 pounds.
The 72-year-old Anderson, Calif., woman tried diets for years. They didn't work, so she gave up on them.
"The main thing is I can't follow a diet, no matter how hard I try. I just can't do it," Garton said.
And yet she was able to go from 174 pounds to 142 pounds. Garton said she lost weight because she started eating differently.
She stays away from carbohydrates, eats more fruits and vegetables, and makes her own juice at home, she said. She also gets support from her friends when she weighs in at weekly meetings.
Garton may be on to something.
In a marketplace teeming with diet plans and products, too many of them don't work, health and nutrition experts say.
And though Americans spend about $33 billion a year trying to lose weight, people just keep getting fatter, according to the American Dietetic Association.
So how do people decide which diet plan or nutritional supplement will help them catch the bright elusive butterfly of weight loss?
Forget it. Don't even go there, said Shasta (Calif.) College instructor Joan Bosworth. The maze of weight loss programs usually leads to a dead end, she said.
"If you've ever been on a diet, it doesn't work. You can't live the rest of your life on a diet. It has to be a lifestyle," Bosworth said.
Go back to basics
Those who want to lose weight need to change their eating habits. Go back to basics and eat basic foods, she said.
"We don't need Atkins. We don't need South Beach," she said. "We need to eat whole foods rather than processed foods."
Jennifer Kirby, a registered dietitian at Mercy Medical Center in Redding, Calif., said she teaches people to eat right and exercise more as a means to lose weight.
Eating right means including more fruits and vegetables into meals, drinking plenty of water and limiting meat servings to 3-4 ounces per meal, Kirby said. People should also consider low-fat dairy products.
"Typically the thing I like to do is say there's not a miracle diet," Kirby said. She urges people to change what is in their diet, rather than adopt a new diet.
Changes in diet should come slowly. And people should give themselves smaller, attainable goals, she said.
Eating out at restaurants less will also help those who want to trim pounds, Kirby said.
In 28 years of teaching nutrition, Bosworth said, she has watched Americans' eating habits change -- and it hasn't been good.
Do not super-size
People are generally eating more processed foods that are higher in fat, she said.
"The big issue that I see is that everything has become super-sized, and unfortunately, we've created super-sized people," Bosworth said.
The first thing Bosworth teaches students is to read food labels. They should learn to figure out nutrient and fat levels in foods, as well as identify the ingredients.
And she tells students that if they can't pronounce the name of an ingredient, they shouldn't be eating that food.
Claudia Bays, a nursing and nutrition instructor at Sacramento State University, said people too often look for a quick-fix diet. But in the long-term, the weight doesn't stay off.
Losing weight is a lifestyle decision, Bays said.
"You don't have to spend your whole day at the gym working out your whole life," Bays said.
Instead, find ways to make exercise part of the daily routine. People should park their cars farther away from a destination so they have to walk more; or take the stairs rather than the elevator, she said.
"I think diet plans are to make money. I think it has to start earlier, like in families," Bays said. "People have to get the concept that they are responsible for their own lives.