MYTH: To lose weight, you must give up your food favorites forever and ever.

FACT: To lose weight, you don’t "have to" give up anything. Let’s face it. As soon as you proclaim you’re going to give up your favorite food friend, you’re probably tempted to indulge as soon as the next day! Instead of trying to trap yourself in that "I have to give up" box, follow a new strategy. Think addition, not subtraction, and give yourself wiggle room.

Think about which foods you "get to" add to your day instead of which you "have to" give up. Center your meals on your weight warriors and health heroes: whole, fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as whole grains, beans, sprouts, raw, unsalted nuts and seeds, and homemade fruit and vegetable juices. Fill up on these foods first and then eat your traditional not-so-good for you foods. Enjoy your wiggle room, flexibility in your food plan. Just don’t wiggle more than 20% of the time, or you won’t lose that jiggle.

MYTH: Carbs make you fat.

FACT: Who started the rumor that eating fruit, nature’s best, is the same as eating refined white sugar? All carbohydrates are not created equally. There are good carbs and bad carbs. Good carbs are sourced by whole, unrefined plant foods, as in fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes, the best-for-you foods. The good carbs, your body’s most efficient fuel, you ate yesterday give you today’s energy. (No, protein doesn’t provide energy.)

Bad carbs are sourced by refined plant foods, such as white sugar and white flour products: breads, cookies, pastries, doughnuts, cake, candy, desserts, soft drinks, store-bought drinks, and many processed, packaged foods. Bad carbs, high in calories and empty of nutrients, add fat to your fat.

Whether a diet preaches high protein, low fat, low carb, high carb, prepackaged diet meals, diet shakes three times a day, or baby-sized starvation portions, the real truth is that weight gain or loss is ultimately dictated not by any one major nutrient, but by one very simple math equation:

(Calories IN) - (Calories OUT) = The FAT You Wear

MYTH: Cravings are all in your imagination.

FACT: Cravings are real. They can hold you hostage and stuck in a body you don’t want or like. Diets usually deprive you of enough calories and nutrients (especially carbohydrates), intensifying cravings, those uncontrollable urges to eat alluring food faves that are high in calories, sugar, fat, salt, and/or chemicals.

Fresh fruits and vegetables feed you all the nutrients necessary for human health and life, satisfying your hunger drive and minimizing or wiping out cravings, sometimes within the first week.

MYTH: Olive oil is a good fat.

FACT: This will shock you! Did you know that your body makes almost all the fats it needs? Two exceptions: linoleic and alphalinoleic fatty acids, amply sourced by a variety of plant foods. Therefore, it serves no purpose whatsoever to add more fat to the ready-made fat, especially a highly concentrated, refined fat that comes without any nutrition. All added oils, even olive oil, offer you one thing only: calories, and those calories come with a fat price tag – more fat added to your hips, tummy, thighs, and arms. Translation: olive oil a bad fat!

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