10 Awful Things No One Tells You About Dieting

4. It's Expensive (In More Ways Than One)

Gym memberships, cookbooks, workout clothes, DVDs, or "support group" enrolment, fees all add up. Never mind that if you lose enough weight, you're going to have to replace your wardrobe. Or maybe not: since only about 1 in 10 to 1 in 20 dieters succeed in the long term, you might want to hang on to those fat pants. And even if you decide to get your workouts from the Internet, your cookbooks from the library, and your new threads from the thrift shop, there's still the cost of time. Time is probably the most precious commodity you'll ever be afforded in your life. You should think carefully about how you allocate it. The time you spend on dieting isn't just the time you spend on the treadmill, or cooking a decent meal from scratch. The quality of the rest of your time starts to deteriorate, thanks to decision fatigue. The more decisions we have to make, the poorer (and more stressful) they inevitably become, whether it's about whether to dump a girlfriend or which pair of slacks to wear to the family Christmas party. When you're dieting, you're faced with a whole host of decisions that didn't need to be made before. Should I go running now or after work? Which of these salad dressings has the least amount of fat? Should I have that glass of wine or that piece of cake? They all seem like such little, inconsequential things, but over the course of a day they add up. This wouldn't be a big deal if you were, say, independently wealthy and didn't have to bother with pesky little things like jobs, bills, child-rearing, and so forth, but odds are you do. Odds are also that you are not the superwoman badass that Maria Kang apparently is, and that you might find juggling the mental and financial resources necessary for basic survival, self-fulfillment, and a trim body rather trying, especially for an extended period of time.