NEWS FLASH: Calorie counting does not burn calories, it just burns you out.

As I mentioned before, too often people are focused on the number of calories, grams, exchanges and various calculations — a mechanical process. They check out the percentages, ratios and the body mass index (which does not take into account certain variables such as bone density and muscle mass). After all, we are all built differently.

Then there is the scale, which is just another set of numbers in the seemingly endless parade of calculations. Women in particular become obsessed with the need to be at the “perfect” weight and look like women in magazine ads. No matter how hard anyone tries it never seems good enough. In today’s society, we are bombarded with images of stick-thin people. How realistic is that? Or more to the point, how healthy is that? Just food for thought.

Excerpt from the award-winning book Lose the Diet. Copyright by Kathy Balland. Get Lose the Diet now on Amazon!