Diets. We’ve all either tried at least one or know someone who has. It may have been some new fad diet, a diet that’s been around in one form or another for years (whether it’s effective or not), some absurd diet endorsed by some popular celebrity, or something that requires magical natural supplements available in pill form.

The thing is, they’re rather like self-help books. If they really worked there wouldn’t need to be thousands of them with more new ones arriving all the time. They’d just work and that would be that.

Not all diets are bad although a great many of them are based on flawed logic. Take, for example, the currently popular Paleo Diet. The idea behind it is that our Paleolithic ancestors where hearty and healthy and the reason is because of what they ate – you know, the hunter-gatherer fare that likely consisted of fruits, veggies, meats, and nuts. But that’s a flawed argument because there were a great number of other factors at play that made our paleo-ancestors the way they were. Using the paleo diet line of thinking is like saying ‘In these modern times people live, on average, three times longer than Paleolithic man. We also eat a lot of junk and processed foods. Ergo, eating a bunch of junk and processed foods is the reason why we live three times longer.”

Uh … no.

Paleolithic man scrounged for whatever fruit and berries and nuts he could find. He hunted his food when he could, which means he was running around a lot, and not getting much food in return for his efforts which means Paleo-dude was burning one heck of a lot of calories. In addition, he also didn’t have grocery stores that he could drive his SUV to and where he could conveniently purchase food in air-conditioned comfort. The main reason our paleo-brehtern were not fat is because they had to put a ton of effort to get what little food they could. And I’m not even going to get into the details how the meat he had available to him was different than meats available to us today (for example it was much more lean), and that plants available in their time were different, and so on and so forth. Suffice it to say you may think you’re eating what your Paleolithic ancestors ate but in reality you’re not even close. If you could travel back in time and eat what our ancestors actually ate you’d most likely A) be ill, and B) see that it isn’t even remotely close to what you purchase in a grocery store, let alone the conditions it was prepared under and eaten in.

Now this is not to say that the basic principle underlying the Paleo Diet isn’t of value. Trying to eat food that is directly of the earth and avoiding garbage that is processed, in other words food that comes in boxes or bags, is deep fried, or handed to you via the drive-thru, is a good thing. The whole “eating clean” diet (which does not mean you make use of a lot of napkins) is similar and has a lot of common sense behind it – eat whole foods that are not processed or refined. This is often referred to as “real” food or “eating healthy”.

On the other end of the scale are the nonsense fads, especially the type of thing you see online, such as:

This new weight loss pill111 has the diet industry furious! Find out why.

John Doe lost 100 lbs in three weeks eating these three secret vegetables!

The Secret Diet They Don’t Want You To Know About!

Any time the word “secret” is used in any form of advertising or promotion, it’s nonsense. There are no secrets to weight loss. There are no secrets to getting in better shape. All it requires is common sense and hard work.

So, as a public service, we’re going to revel the “secret” to losing weight and the “secret” to getting in better shape. This will be quick. It doesn’t require an entire book nor a 19 DVD set along with subscribing to a newsletter. It’s quite simple actually.

To lose weight you must eat healthy and burn more calories than you take in.

That’s it.

To get in better shape you need to follow the instruction above regarding weight loss and also work out … as in exercise.

That’s it.

I know. Kind of anti-climatic, right?

Most truths in life are.