I just discovered a blog that I’m enjoying a lot, and added to my sidebar under “Fitness”. It’s called The Great Fitness Experiment, and it’s written by one Charlotte Hilton Andersen. She writes about fitness and nutrition, with a side dish of hilarity, and I’ve found myself going through her archives and reading back through all her many experiments.

This morning I found a great post she wrote on March 15th entitled, The Diet Wars: Learning to Listen. It starts out:

Welcome to Dueling Diets! I’m your host, Crazy Charlotte. Today I’ll be pitting the Primal Blueprint a la Mark Sisson against the Engine 2 Diet a la Rip Esselstyn, all as part of my “Striving for Perfection” Experiment this month.

Sound familiar? I was posting about Paleo versus Rip recently myself (part 1 and part 2), although I haven’t done the personal experimentation that Charlotte has (I’m still working on the elimination diet – more on that later).

You should definitely go read her post, because her writing is entertaining and friendly, but I wanted to talk about her conclusions a little bit, because they’re very similar to what several of you guys have been telling me:

A recent study in The New England Journal of Medicine looked at dieters on several different popular diets. Their conclusion – and this will surprise no one – is that despite all the hype, it doesn’t really matter much which diet you pick as long as you cut your calories. I know, the whole “eat less” thing again. The key is to find the diet that helps your body live with the calorie restriction the best. And that apparently can differ from person to person.

Now I know that will sound familiar to some of you, eh? It’s a paraphrase of what you put in comments (and send me in email!), which brings me to….

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM.

Yeah, it’s me. I’m not saying I’m an elephant, I’m saying I’m like that thing that no one talks about. I’m THE THING. Except less swampy. I have been writing about different diets for the last, what, six months? And you guys have patiently listened and commented and encouraged me, and yet the fact of the matter is, six months later, I still:

• …don’t have a regular exercise routine.
• …don’t have a regular diet, meaning a general healthy routine. I still eat willy nilly, even when I’m eliminating things.
• …don’t know how to cook very well.
• …don’t have hardly any recipes on this blog.
• …don’t have any significant weight loss, despite knowing that I need to lose weight to get these hormones in check and my cycle back on track.

I felt such a kinship reading Charlotte’s blog because she struggles with a lot of the same thought patterns I do, even while she’s doing a whole lot more work than I am! She’s brave enough to talk about them, and she’s brave enough to keep going. I talk AROUND my issues, and then I avoid doing a lot of things that might help, because I’m sincerely afraid of it all just failing. I’m afraid I’ll work out every day and nothing will happen. I’m afraid I’ll try to eat right and it will be too hard, or I’ll suck at it, and then I’ll be too afraid to write about it. It’s a lot easier to write about my potential for things than it is to write about struggling through those things.

But I’m going to give it a shot anyway, because this is getting a little ridiculous. I’ve got a perfectly LOVELY little blog here, and it isn’t going anywhere. I’m still sitting on my ass. My ridiculously flat behind, which could use a few squats. As could the rest of me.

I’m still going to write about what I’m eating, but I’m going to try and write less about the theoretics of it all, and instead write more about how I feel, and how my body does, and how I’m learning to cook it all up. I still want to write about diet trends and staying heart healthy, and all the nutrition news I read every day, because I find all that fun. But it has to stop being an excuse to not do any of my own work. On that note: I’m off for a ride on the stationary bike. Wish me luck!