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Why do most diets fail? Or do most folks fail diets? Or is it a mishmash who hash combo duo defeat? To get to the meat of the issue let’s delve into the bare bones of what, mentally, makes us mortals tick.

For, apart from specific physiological reasons preventing individuals from trying certain diets, most of us have the physical ability to go on the diet of our choice. Not that we really want to, but when one can’t fit into the bedroom, let alone the high school football sweater or cheerleading skirt, diet strategies are the primary means to get lean.

No, the problem lies in what’s in (or not in) our minds. Any slimming and shaping success first rests with an avowed goal to change, in whole or in part, what, why, when – and even where – we eat – and how we also ensure we get adequate and proper nutrition for exercising. Dietary changes without workouts is a doomed recipe, not to prosper.

Let’s assume we’ve expressed the need. Now it must be decided if this need is to swish down the drain as a mere wish, or whether it will it stay in the conscious as a goal. Wishes are nice, but let’s face it, without a written goal to firm up the chances of sticking to any diet are slight.

The diet, and exercises, of your choice must have targets – in any combination of inches lost, pounds dropped, foods chosen, or monies spent. Because opting for a diet, divorced from tangible, visible, or financial results is folly. A diet is only a means to an end, and while reasons of vanity and economy in altering food habits are often ever present, what should always be permanently paramount are the factors of feeling better and living healthier.

A big problem as to why dieting, or diets, or losing weight, or getting fit fail sooner or later is due to motivation: not the bright-eyed bushy-tailed motivation at the outset when all is new and exciting, but the motivation that can stand up to and surmount the first signs of standstill, or regression.

Too often when we plateau in exercise personal bests we lose patience, go on a binge, and stop exercising instead of wisely and dutifully, biding our time, recounting our achievements and repeating our mission. To plug on and persist through these leveling offs, as the body adapts to a balanced exercise program change, should see not only improvements in increased speed, power, stamina, and flexibility but see improvements in body form too. Keeping at it is the best course of action.

Similarly, with our new food choices, if the weight or inches come off slowly or damned near imperceptibly, too frequently we throw in the towel and toss a tantrum, instead of being thankful for the progress we have made. Any progress is good progress and every bit is nothing to be sneezed at.

Now this is not to say that one blindly or irresolutely should continue with a program that shows no positive change after a week. If no measurable benchmarks have been met after 7 days, it’s pretty safe to say the regimen and routine need tweaking.

Tweaking, not trashing.

Motivation, therefore, is a biggie but even that can’t always counteract a HUGE factor in having us flunk out in losing fat and gaining lean muscle mass. What kills healthy eating and healthy pursuits faster than a year’s paid eating vacation on the Vegas buffet strip is…

Stress.

We gotta lessen that stress. But if you can’t sign off work permanently, or sign up for a new boss, or try not to scrap with present and past spouses simultaneously, the optimum thing, believe it or not, may be to not go on a “diet” at all.

Say what? Yes, research has shown that stress created – at the very thought of dieting – causes you and me to produce the hormone cortisol, which increases appetite and subsequent splurge sprees on comfort comestibles. Junk food. And the doing of dieting only compounds the problem.

And guess what? Junk food not only is harmful physiologically, it’s damaging psychologically to boot. You feel guilty, you feel bad – sure the taste buds are getting a kick, a joy, a burst of pleasure, but the thrill doesn’t last, yet the feeling that you screwed up sure does – and angst and remorse adds to more stress – and before you know it you’re piling on fat, packaged around the hips and belly. Take that.

So if we remove “dieting” and all its connotations of food-type allotment, restricted portions, and calorie counting from the equation and focus on finding foods that fill us up, are good for us, and are beneficial to the budget – one could do a lot worse than eating eggs, split peas, spinach, and grapefruit.

(Hold it: this is where the caveat comes in to consult your doctor before even thinking of doing anything, anything at all, especially involving eating.) These foods, as a base, plus water of course, do fit the bill in providing nourishment, some satisfaction, and some traction in the fight against slipping into a sugar hit-fix. You’ll feel full. You won’t feel deprived. Your finances won’t be hard done by. All of these should lessen stress and thereby reduce the need to reach for the sweets every night, or each day.

Look, junk food tastes great. So it’s like murder to try to limit our intake to once a week. Sometimes, after a few days of not scarfing chips and cookies, you really don’t miss them. But it’s that first bite that gets us back into that evil vortex of gormandizing “goodies.” And balloon up again we go.

And that is a sadly all too familiar, seemingly never-ending, show.

When is the “impermissible” permissible? When it involves the NCAA and Baylor University. The Baylor Lady Bears are no ladies, but they’ll brazenly bear down for basketball glory no matter how much it may sullen their university/basketball story.

They’re the bad news Baylor Bears.

The Lady Bears soared to an amazing 40-0 record, a first for the NCAA this season, but instead of being stars, they’ll be asterisks, what with their hitting the heights of athletic cesspool ethics.

The “major infractions” were literally hundreds of “impermissible” phone calls and texts sent by the women’s and men’s team coaches and assistants to prep recruits.

Baylor probably growled in private and pretended to feel bad in public. They thought they should be punished: big of them. They thought they had the perfect punishment in mind – and recommended same to the NCAA.

The latter said OK, and the 3 year probation bad-bear-beware blandishment was born.

Despite having a lifetime .779 winning percentage with Baylor, topped off with getting this year’s  Naismith Coach of the Year award, women’s coach, Kim Mulkey, seems full of malarkey. She’s now restricted to the straight and narrow, but she did offer this softball up: “I believe strongly in following NCAA rules…” Except when she doesn’t. And while believing in something is marvy, acting on something would be magnificent.

In her statement released by the school she added (paraphrasing) she’s gonna try to obey the rules in the future.

Nice to know.

She attributed the lapse to administrative sloth in not documenting phone calls. But how would tracking phone call subjects and specifics make any difference? Surely the caller(s) going in would know if they intended to talk hanky-panky monkey business. And if they did, they could lie and dutifully track the conversation as one of arranging for basketball-shirt dry cleaning. Who’d be the wiser? A phone log would not shed light. The only way to unearth scoundrels in work slime-crime would be to record the calls – for the record.

Apparently the way Baylor recruited player of the year, Brittney Griner, was probed by the NCAA. Mulkey mused about finding the right balance between the 2 hats of coach and mother.

On the men’s side, now resigned former assistant Mark Morefield, was reported to have requested a couple of coaches of prospect Hanner Perea’s AAU and high school days give false information to the NCAA, related to text messages. Mark (paraphrasing again) said sorry and added he had learned that he needed a better understanding of NCAA rules.

It might have been nice if he learned fundamental “do’s and don’ts” when younger.

Many folks, let’s generalize – hit below the belt – and call them lawyers, learn the “ins and outs” of regulations, or NCAA rules for example, so they can skirt or deal around them in those vaunted unclassified “grey” areas.

Funnily enough Scott Drew, the men’s coach under whose reign some of these violations happened, was, in his own words, hired to rebuild the Baylor program after ethics mishaps in 2003. He says they are continuing on the journey…

Baylor’s journey is sure not on an immutable, inexorable, direct line to a “going straight” path. The school zigzags in moral mire more than a mountain road, when it’s not backtracking into muck and yuck.

On its official website Baylor makes a big deal about the self-imposed penalties. Big whoop. No, make that whoopee – wouldn’t everybody accused, and likely to be found guilty, want to be their own self judge and their own sole jury?

Baylor Bears badgering calls…where’s the beef, the smoking gun, the big deal? We are talking of 528 harmless phone calls and 738 texts over a 29-month span right? Wink, wink, say no more, correct? One might not think this a grievous infraction but Berry Tramel, sports columnist for The Oklahoman, puts it into proper perspective. His full argument is here, but basically it’s all about developing a relationship advantage between school and prospect that Baylor’s competitors would not have done, assuming they played by the rules. In this case talk isn’t cheap – while money did not pass hands – sweet asides and pandering prose might well have paved the way for a parent to persuade their progeny to go with Baylor.

Ignorance of the law, we are always hectoring our kids, is no excuse. And to hide behind the skirts of administrative sloth is a canard. What Baylor did was wrong. Their 100’s of errors in “record keeping” seem less than honest. Honest errors can evoke sympathy, but dishonest ones deserve nothing less than derision. Baylor will have to live with some contempt (but most likely not from “Baylor Nation”) at least in the short term, for its wayward decisions.

Wacky bad news travels slow on the Waco campus: they just had a 2012 Lady Bear Appreciation Banquet. No eating crow here…