Dieting is a pain. I think basically everyone would agree that having to adhere to a rigid restriction of your free-flow eating preferences puts a bit of a damper on the whole food experience. And eating should be one of the pleasures of life, right?

In my online diet and weight loss counseling service, I try to get around that big negative by blowing the doors off the conventional diet “box”. What we need to do here is make what is good for you TASTE GOOD TO YOU.

If you think about it, most of what is not good for you is basically made appetizing with loads of sauces, dips, dressing, salsa or salt and flavour enhancers. So it’s really just the sauce that tastes great. Don’t believe me? Try a burger with no mayo, no ketchup and no salt. Well maybe you still like the burger but my point is, we can make anything taste great with a little dressing, so how about doing that instead, with the “good for you” foods.

Now, one of the interesting things is that quite a lot of the “good foods” taste great with very little dressing, so we get an easy “win” there, no hardship involved. For the rest, we just get a little creative and, as an example of a really simple recipe that yields up the sweetest peppers ever, have a look at the recipe my wife has posted on my website www.gordonblack.com. Just click right there on the first page, and if you try it , e-mail me with your comments; I think it’s almost like eating candy.

So which are the “good foods”? Well, I think you can be pretty confident over in the fruit and vegetable area, there is not much there that can do damage to our weight management program; and what tastes better than a really ripe tomato, or papaya or mango?

Fish, shellfish, pasta, yes, pasta is in my plan big-time and with loads of real tomato sauce which

Now, at the start I titled this article, Trade In Your Diet For A Lifestyle, and you’re probably thinking, where’s the lifestyle part? Well, here it is. You can eat loads of goodies as long as you make a corresponding investment in some form of exercise. It’s like a balancing act, as much as you load up one side, you have to balance it out with the other, and in this case the “other” is the regular exercise. Regular is the operative word, it must be regular even though it doesn’t have to be those exhausting “burn off the pounds” sessions I see so often. Just regular, consistent exercise with something you hopefully like doing, walking, cycling, swimming, golfing and if you really enjoy aerobics, that’s fine too.

So it’s really all about balance, and the freedom to eat as you wish, as long as you stay with the “good foods”, balanced out with that regular exercise. I think the trade-off is very liberating and certainly worth it.

Gordon Black is a world-ranked Master swimmer and Canadian national record holder. A member of the British swim team in the late ‘60s, after thirty years out of the pool, last year Gordon returned to competitive swimming in the Masters forum. He offers an online weight loss, fitness and motivational coaching service through his web site http://www.gordonblack.com where his competitive comeback is chronicled. He is currently working on a book based on his own weight management and fitness system.

gordon@gordonblack.com