Diet traps are popular “truths” or “answers” believed to be “common sense”—that aren’t.
For example: “eat less,” often combined with “exercise more”. This tenet seems innocuous and
beneficial, and is assumed effective as a solution to being overweight. “The Calorie Theory”
mentioned above is another example. But, these so-called answers or “truths” are simplistic, lack
context and key relevant information, and are useless if your diet is nutrient-poor and your lifestyle
is not balanced and healthy.
Diet traps facilitate the acceptance of all the false diet information we’ve been fed over the
years. For example, this misinformation tells us it’s necessary to eat meat and dairy every day to
lose weight, build strong bones, and be healthy.
Diet traps are short-term methods with negative long-term effects. Low-carb, low-calorie and
low-fat diets encourage us to manipulate nutrient and caloric concentrations in extreme ways that
are not sustainable. Even if they masquerade as “lifestyles,” they’re still diet traps!
Diet traps trick us into thinking there are “silver bullet secrets” to keeping our weight down.
For example, using caffeine as an appetite suppressant, or “pineapple burns belly fat;” these weight-
loss “tricks” either do not work at all (e.g. the pineapple), or only work briefly and for the wrong
reasons (e.g., the short-term appetite suppression caffeine may provide). No “trick” can change
your way of eating and living, which is really what’s needed. There’s no magic bullet. Nor do you
need one.
Diet traps include, but are not limited to, commercial diets. They also include rituals and
tactics that induce unnatural. They include drugs and surgery, too. These don’t free you from food
addictions or fulfill your nutrient needs. They promise success and freedom, but rarely deliver.
Of course, some of the other key, core concepts I’ve already introduced to you and emphasized—
such as the off-purpose focus on weight-loss only—are also high-level, pervasive and insidious diet
traps.
We want you to be free of all diet traps, as well as the diet-speak and Diet Thinking™ that come
from them and support them.
Let’s now take a look at the Pleasure Trap. Awareness of this concept will arm you to shake off all
the other traps, and all of the related speaking and thinking. Then we’ll identify the Top Ten Most
Common Diet Traps specifically. Soon you’ll come to recognize those— and all of their derivatives
that are kicking around out there or that have yet to be invented—and be so educated that you’re
immune to them.