The diet conundrum

There is so much time, money and space concentrating on losing weight these days. It's all over magazines, such as Prevention and Reader's Digest, ads on TV and all over the internet. Diet, diet diet! Miracle pills! "Loose 40 lbs in two weeks!" "How to eat what you want and loose weight." "Easy low calorie dinners." Low fat! Low calories! No carbs!

It makes me sick. It especially bothers me since my doctor taught me that we are better off with fewer carbs than the general public eats; but more importantly, that the key to healthy eating is a balance between carbs (which our brains need in order to function), fat (which insures that we don't get sugar rushes and diabetes later on) and protein (for muscle growth and health)...

And yet... I'm finding that I need to concentrate on my diet, too, and it's just so hard. My primary issue is medication, which increases my appetite. My secondary problem is an addiction to chocolate! Oh, yum!

My previous medication caused me to loose a lot of weight. It was nice at first, but it wouldn't level off. I was technically still a healthy weight for my height and age, but I didn't feel healthy and believed that I might waste away if the trend continued. My current medication causes the opposite problem! Upon starting this medication I nearly immediately bounced back to a more comfortable weight, and my doctor pleaded that I not gain more (this medication can cause cholesterol to get out of hand). I don't believe that I'm eating that much too much, but I seem to continue gaining weight at much the same rate that I lost weight previously. I know that letting chocolate back into my life has something to do with it, but it just seems so unfair! I'm not even a "food person". If it weren't for the fact that we can't function with out it, I wouldn't miss very much food-- except for chocolate, of course!

Diet, diet, diet! Low fat! Low calories! No carbs! Yuck!

How come we can't just pick a weight, and our body obediently sticks with it?!