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Emotional eating can be one of the most disruptive habits to a person’s life. The guilt over losing control, not to mention the worry over the added pounds, drives a lot of emotional eaters to hole up in their homes, cancelling plans and even sometimes missing work. The results can be devastating. But while it only takes a few minutes to make the decision to consume those ten cookies, it also only takes a few minutes to overcome the urge. You just need actions you can take right now to do so.

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Committing to a diet or workout plan means daily mental work, re-scheduling your life, and often depriving yourself of things you really love. So if you’re going to put all that work into something, you deserve to get the results you expect. And you’ll get them sooner if you can differentiate the facts from the fiction about weight loss.

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You probably tried cutting out carbs completely, and while you maybe dropped weight fast, you also likely felt so lethargic you couldn’t stick to your exercise routine! And you were probably a smidge moody too. So you want to incorporate the no-no category of food back into your diet, in a healthy way now? Here are 14 surprisingly slimming carbohydrates that should be a regular part of your diet.

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Whenever anyone talks about wanting to lose weight, what’s the first thing that happens?

Someone mentions a diet.

Oh, you know you’ve heard it before. Where someone eats only mashed potatoes for breakfast, lunch and a snack, or only eats grapefruit for breakfast and lunch, or only sips some weird cayenne pepper kool aid concoction for three weeks straight and before you know it, you’ll be fierce! Fit! Flawless!

Foolishness.

You know why diets feel like the best way to accomplish your weight loss goal? They’re easy. Do X, get Y in response. If you’re given a regimen, it’s that easy to follow, and it promises to give you the results you want, why on Earth would you pass it up? And, if you’re limiting yourself to only eating a food that you actually enjoy? There’s no reason in the world for you to turn your back on that.

What we never do, though, is delve into the realities of dieting and why it works. If weight loss is simply about calories in and calories out, then dieting is simply a quicker way of limiting your calories in with less planning. It’s glorified auto-pilot eating. You don’t have to learn about what part of your habits caused you to gain weight. You don’t have to learn how to eat for your body and your activity levels. You don’t even have to learn how to cook the foods you like differently. You cheat the system; you limit yourself to a handful of foods, inadvertently cut calories, and boom. Weight loss.

Except…without fail, the weight almost always comes back.

Because you didn’t learn which foods were causing your weight gain, because you didn’t learn which habits were causing you to pack on the pounds, because you didn’t learn how to eat for your activity levels… you’ll inevitably put the weight back on. Because you restricted yourself to a handful of foods for an extended period of time, you’ll put the pounds back on as soon as you hop off your diet.

And, because you probably restricted your caloric intake far beyond reasonable levels, you also probably lost the invaluable muscle that burns almost three times as many calories per hour as fat, which means you’ve damaged your metabolism, which means you’ve negatively affected your ability to successfully keep the weight off.

This is why diets are ridiculous: they are plans for losing weight, that have no forethought into how a dieter should keep the weight off. Anyone can lose,  but how you lose that weight should be directly tied into how you keep it off. Are you going to only eat grapefruit and mashed potatoes for breakfast? Or are you going to learn how to eat a breakfast that is not only tasty, but nutritious and within your allotted calories? Are you going to sip cayenne pepper cocktails forever, or are you going to figure out that you shouldn’t be packing away an entire sleeve of cookies in a day? Are you going to find ways to enjoy what you eat and still eat nutritiously in a way that preserves your figure?

If so, then your best bet is to skip the “diet.” Learn what your body likes. Understand what it needs. And, rest assured, your body will thank you for it!

Erika Nicole Kendall is the writer behind the award winning blog, A Black Girl’s Guide to Weight Loss, where she blogs everything from fitness to food, weight loss to wellness, body image and even her own 160lb weight loss journey. A trainer certified in women’s fitness, fitness nutrition and weight loss coaching, she can be found taking over your Internet on Youtube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

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Hate to exercise? Feel allergic to it? Is it your idea of torture? You’re not alone. But you still want to be slim and healthy, right? Forget complicated machinery, personal trainers, and expensive workout clothes. Here are 14 no-workout ways to lose weight that almost anyone can do.

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As another year on the fitness calendar has ended, researchers and nutritionists have picked apart 2012’s diet trends to tell us which ones should be ditched, which ones should prevail, and which ones are just in need of a little adjustment. Here is what to expect of diets trends for 2013.

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Unless it’s a liquid, 3 oz. or 2 tsp. of anything is impossible to measure. You almost feel offended when you’re reading a cookbook and you’re told to put 2 cups of raw spaghetti in the pot. As if you’re supposed to know what that looks like without sticking that spaghetti in a blender first! Here are tangible, visual ways to understand common cooking measurements.

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Timing is everything in life, and that includes when you eat. Maybe you only consume 1,500 calories a day, but if you have them all in one sitting, you’ll find your weight oddly fluctuating. Maybe you eat perfectly healthy foods, but you eat them at odd hours when your metabolism just isn’t ready for any kind of food. To get the timing right, here are 14 tricks to keep a proper eating schedule.

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The food industry is always trying to take advantage of the millions of people taking to a healthier lifestyle, slapping misleading labels on packages and publishing reports about their product’s health benefits, while hiding the overpowering detriments. But don’t be fooled. These “healthy” foods have no place in your diet.

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You know that if you have it in your house, you will eat it. And the more you eat it, the more you want it. That’s why you should keep these foods out of sight and out of mind as much as possible to begin with. Besides, they’re wreaking havoc on your New Year’s diet resolutions, not to mention your health.