Kale is Making You Fat

I’ve been there, too. Busting my butt on yet another diet, eating nothing but prepackaged “foods” and celery sticks.

Initially, I would lose some weight, maybe 5 pounds. But soon, I became totally repulsed by the thought of ANOTHER tasteless microwave meal or steamed kale that I wanted to vomit.

So, I stopped the diet, gained back the weight…. and then 5 more pounds. That’s why I’m saying- kale is making you fat!

So, what do I mean by this?

The reason you gain weight after dieting is simple: depriving yourself of what you actually LIKE, makes it VERY difficult to sustain for the long term.

When you are being forced to eat things that are considered “diet-food” that you don’t even enjoy, it is so easy to just quit.

Does this story sound familiar? I bet it does because if you’ve been on any diet before then you’ve seen this first hand. It starts off with all the excitement of a sexy new relationship and ends with hard feelings and weight gain.

There is a ton of research out there that says that dieting is a surefire way to gain weight. Researchers at UCLA did an analysis of 31 long-term diet studies and found just that. “Initially you can lose 5 to 10 percent of your weight on any number of diets, but then the weight comes back.”

They found that dieters rarely sustained their weight loss. In fact, the majority were better off not even dieting at all. Say, what?! 

Sorry to pick on kale (I actually love it now), but you can replace that with any other food or exercise that you freaking HATE! Maybe for you that means radish and quinoa or the treadmill and yoga.

And it’s not the foods or exercises themselves – it’s the traditional approach of dieting.

Kale is a wonder veggie with lots of Vitamin A, B, and K as well as iron and potassium. It might be healthy, but if the taste of it makes you squirm, it won’t help you lose the weight.

That’s why it is so important to choose a weight loss program that allows you to incorporate what you love and what you enjoy so that you have the motivation to keep it going. This is the key to making it feel not like dieting, with the deprivation and tasteless, yucky foods that come with it.

Find a healthy food that you love to eat, and go crazy! I HATE green peppers. So, why would I force-feed them to myself because my diet told me to? That’s insane!

But, I do now love kale and some many other delicious foods that are healthy – so I never have to worry about green peppers again.

Same thing with exercise! Find an exercise that you enjoy, like Zumba, biking, or walking with friends, and go nuts! I don’t have to run a 10K to feel like I exercised and neither do you.

So although it sounds silly to say that kale is making you fat, know that any health food or workout that you dread has the potential to make you fat.

Find the healthy habits and foods you love and you’ll never have to diet again!