Diet

Many women think of diets as short-term solutions to real or imagined weight problems. Even the smartest and most well-educated among us sometimes succumb to the lure of the quick fix. We buy diet pills, eat only certain foods on certain days, or proclaim the wonders of the cabbage soup diet. Taken to an extreme, we may become so focused on food and have such distorted body images that we develop eating disorders.

Fast weight-loss programs may make us forget the common sense reality that we have to eat for our entire lives. A two-week or two-month regimen will not make you healthy -- it won't even make you thin. Extreme over- or under-eating can seriously compromise our health; it can even kill us.

Vesta helps us focus on the long term and on results. Under her influence, we make a commitment to our health, and eating right is one of the best forms of health insurance in existence.

Women with strong Vestal influences may find it easy to maintain healthy eating habits throughout their lives. For the rest of us, a balanced diet may be a daily struggle. But it's not out of reach, and the longer you stick with it, the less tempting it is to stop.

Remember that balance means neither denying yourself nor gorging on your favorite foods. It means striking the right blend of nutrients and finding a variety of tastes and textures that keep you satisfied. If you're not sure where to begin, try CyberDiet, which offers nutritional analyses of hundreds of foods and helps you plan your shopping and meals.

The USDA's food pyramid shows how many servings you should eat each day from the various food groups, based on your size, gender, and activity level. Keep in mind that an official serving of a particular food is probably a smaller portion than you're used to. One half of a banana equals one serving of fruit, and one portion of fish or meat is only the size of a deck of cards.

The bottom line? The get-thin-quick diet industry doesn't care about your health as much as it cares about your money. You may feel like a failure if you don't stick with a diet or if you gain the weight back, but the truth is that diets don't work. The diet industry makes much of its money from repeat business.

And eating right, once you get started, is much easier to live with than the side effects of cabbage soup or fiber-rich diet drinks.

More on Health:

Health
Fitness
Alternative Remedies
Fitness Grid

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