When on a diet, it's more than just a diet, isn't it? On the surface, it's straight-forward: A) reduce calorie intake beyond daily usage; B) add workouts to increase energy expenditure (optional); and C) mitigate and eliminate risks like appetite: -A + -B + C.

Pretty simple right?

We grab that answer and apply it against the total calories held in the energy reserves. At 3500 a pound of fat, with 100 lbs, we're talking a colossal 350,000 calories in the bank! Whoo boy howdy—dieting is like goin' on an all-night shoppin' spree down at the Walmart, right?!

If only.

No, dieting isn't that simple, is it? Nothing about we as people is simple. We say one thing and mean another, do one thing and intend to do something else. Forevermore, there's this tension between who we are and where we want to be. I don't necessarily think we intend for this grand Machiavellian scheme of subterfuge of exploitation of power acquisition. Some do, of course, others are oblivious, and still others are disinterested in the attainment of power...but, that is the subject of a lengthy treatise...

Dial it back: dieting is complicated. We're not just resisting the Talladegan exuberance of a "bountiful harvest of Domino's, KFC, and the always delicious Taco Bell." I wish it was as simple as declining the majestic, black-light-ablaze Twinkie.

Dieting is also about managing our expectations and reactions, whether it is involves milestone progress or more fundamentally: changing the way we think. At its core, dieting is about changing the type of person we are: we either lean more toward solving problems or we are a whirlwind departing a now decimated concourse dripping of Krispy Kreme.

In what ways do we respond when we are...

• Subjected to conflict or just conflicted;
• Stressed;
• Worried;
• Tired;
• Hurt;
• Bored;
• Locked into a routine;
• Lazy;
• ...and so forth and so on ad nauseam.

Over years of unrealized development, I became someone who answers all of that with food. And not with spinach. As much as I'd like to blame marketing departments and food laboratories, in the final analysis, it is ME who chose a poor solution for whatever problem I was experiencing at the time. Did that food resolve that issue? No, but I'm sure it gave me that zing where I felt good in the moment—yeah, because THAT resolves everything, right?

So, dieting is really not dieting by definition. Diet is really change through resolving emotional turbulence by effective problem resolution....or at the very least, maintaining a mindfulness of what is going on and why our quick trigger response is what it is.

I mean, c'mon, if my car has a flat, I wouldn't hurl a burrito at it. Why have I chosen to do that in other areas of my life?

And I don't care how much spinach Popeye can grapple with those formidable forearms, it ain't gonna fix that broken washer!