16 Oct, 2017 | Binge and emotional eating recovery coach | No Comments
Why diets don’t work
As fat loss programs, diets don’t work! Yes, you lose weight, but about 95% of people who lose weight by dieting will regain it in 1-5 years. Since dieting, by definition, is a temporary food plan, it won’t work in the long run. Moreover, the deprivation of restrictive diets may lead to a diet-overeat or diet-binge cycle. And since your body doesn’t want you to starve, it responds to overly-restrictive diets by slowing your metabolism which of course makes it harder to lose weight.
1. Fad diets can be harmful.
They may lack essential nutrients, for example. Moreover, they teach you nothing about healthy eating. Thus, when you’ve “completed” your fad diet, you simply boomerang back to the unhealthy eating patterns that caused your weight gain in the first place! This is the beginning of “yo-yo dieting,” which can bring long term weight gain
One thing we know for certain, however, is that most of these diets are not concerned with long-term weight loss – because if they were we wouldn’t have a 33 billion dollar diet industry. They would do their job and we would move on.
2. The Calorie law is flawed
I’m sure you’ve heard the classic “solution” to weight loss is simply: eat less, move more. That’s not how fat loss happens.
This day and age there is a gym around every corner there are thousands of diets out there however obesity is still on a steady rise.
How much you eat definately matters, but looking at calories and macros as the answer to fat burning ignores how fat loss actually takes place
In order to burn or store fat you need certain hormonal triggers. These hormonal triggered are highly influenced by the food we eat.
There are certain cellular signals required for fat loss, once I ubderstood these I was free from calorie & macro counting and I got more results with less hunger, fewer cravings and I no longer have to send hours running or exercising
Keep your eyes out for my next blog on hormonal triggers to burn fat
3.All or Nothing Is A Recipe For Failure
How many times while on your latest diet had you given in to that cupcake at work thinking “I know I shouldn’t but I’ll be good again tomorrow”
Tomorrow comes and you have that extra glass of wine because you already messed up yesterday so “I’ll start again on Monday”
Reaching for perfection or defining what “on diet” looks like means you’ll always have a reason to give up and strive for a fresh start at the first sight of temptation.
Your body doesn’t require perfection to generate progress. Plus, the pursuit of perfection is going to leave you frustrated and disappointed, even if you’re making progress.
Rather than striving for perfection, why not make one change at a time and practice this at every meal and every temptation. This will help with progress in the right direction. Each little step in the right direction gets you closer to your goal.
4. Diets don’t create sustainable change
Most of us can change our eating habits for a week or two, or sometimes even a month or two, but most often – dietary induced changes are external changes – “eat this, and don’t eat that.” Of course what we eat is important, but changing the type of food we eat alone does not necessarily create long lasting change, because it doesn’t touch on the deep rooted beliefs, patterns, and behaviours that drive our food choices and eating habits in the first place.
If a diet only focuses on food choices and doesn’t touch upon “why,” we keep reaching for foods that are not in the best interest of our health and vitality, then we are likely to be stuck working only on the surface level. In order to make sustainable changes in our eating habits, we need to explore why we eat, how we eat and who we are as an eater.
Lifelong change comes from making shifts on both the external level of food choices and eating behaviour, as well as internally, which we know as the psychology of eating.
Mindset is what keeps you going or throws you off course.
My mission is to help you fill the gap between knowing what to do and actually following through with it.
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