To reprogram your brain to reject diets, the first step is recognizing when you’re being sold one.
While it may seem simple, it's not always easy. In a world where dieting is normalized, spotting a restrictive or unhealthy plan can be challenging.
The diet industry often disguises restriction and punishment as ‘health,’ ‘clean eating,’ or ‘transformation.’ Without knowing what to look for, it's hard to discern their intentions. Many of us seek the quickest and easiest path, aspiring for lifelong health to fully enjoy life in our later years.
Awareness is key. Understanding how diets affect us is crucial.
Restrictive diets typically don’t work in the long term. Losing weight temporarily isn’t the same as sustainable success. True success means maintaining weight loss while living a fulfilling life, free from obsession over food and deprivation.
How do diets affect us?
Restrictive diets have a bad reputation, and for good reason: in the vast majority of cases, they don’t work, at least for the long-term. Most people can lose some weight on a restrictive diet, but that doesn’t mean the diet ‘works.’ A diet ‘working’ should mean that we can not only lose weight on it, but also keep that weight off, all while living our best life.
A life where we aren’t obsessing over what we’re eating.
Where we can enjoy food and the company of others while we eat.
Where we aren’t hungry and deprived.
Where we can make food choices for ourselves, wherever we are, in any situation.
Where we can eat what we feel like eating, and eat the foods we love without guilt and shame.
Deprivation of certain important vitamins, minerals, and nutrients our bodies need to be healthy.
Meet Harpreet, she is a 49-year old woman who has always been called ‘chubby’ by her parents and family. She has tried for decades to lose weight and has tried everything from the cabbage soup diet to The Atkins diet to Weight Watchers. Harpreet manages to lose weight but then gains it back. She has noticed since menopause that the weight around her stomach feels like it has increased. She continues to tell herself she is fat and refuses to buy things she likes until she loses 20 pounds. Harpreet has learned about heard Intermittent Fasting and is about to get back on the rollercoaster of highs and lows basing her self-worth on her scale.
Do you see yourself in Harpreet?
Once you become aware of how to spot a diet, and you understand the damage that diets can do to us, it can become a lot easier to turn away from them. Diets usually prioritize weight loss, even when marketed as ‘non-diets.’ Look out for red flags like focusing solely on the number on the scale.
What are some other diet red flags?
Having a specific list of foods that you should and should not eat. There are no foods that should be off-limits, unless there’s a medical reason why you shouldn’t eat them.
Weighing of yourself and/or food. When we drill food down into numbers, we lose track of our internal cues of hunger and fullness. We also can become unnaturally focused on our weight when we weigh ourselves often.
A calorie budget and/or macros. Unless you’ve been in a metabolic chamber, you likely don’t know how many calories you need in a day. Plus, that number varies from day to day. Most diet programs give the same calorie budget to everyone, which is problematic. Calorie needs are not one -size-fits-all.
A ‘tough-love’ approach that makes followers start the plan again if they ‘go off plan.’ This gives people the impression that they’re a failure if they aren’t the version of ‘perfect’ that someone else wants them to be. That can be detrimental to mental health.
The claim that weight loss is ‘easy.’ This claim blames the person for ‘failing’ on their diet, when really, it’s the diet’s fault. Also, weight loss is multifactorial, and never ‘easy.’
Multiple rules, including what to eat, when, and how much. A lot of diet programs hide behind their ‘method’ or ‘protocol,’ when these and their rules have been pulled not from science, but someone’s imagination. In reality, eating should have no rules.
A one-track approach to shrink your body, without addressing relationship with food. Our relationship with food is the ‘why’ behind what, how, and how much we eat. Without addressing that, we don’t get to the core of the issue.
Implying that that particular eating plan is the ‘healthiest’ for everyone, or the only way to be healthy and lose weight, especially in menopause. Beware of diets that target women in menopause. There is no one single diet that helps everyone. The best diet is the one you can stick to. Also, research tells us that intermittent fasting is no better for weight loss than any other plan.
Upsells like supplements and expensive, niche foods. You never need expensive foods or supplements for weight loss.
It makes us believe that we’ve failed when the diet doesn’t work. In reality, it’s the diet’s fault. By making us feel like we’re the problem, the diet industry can ensure that we’ll keep coming back for more.
Finding your comfortable weight and staying there is a process, but it does not have to involve restriction, punishment, or special food and supplements.
Remember that your body tells YOU what your comfortable weight is, not the other way around. Fighting to achieve a weight that’s unrealistic can consume your life. Is it worth it?
Know that for most of us, when we eat according to our hunger, and we stop with the restriction of food, our comfortable weight will likely show itself.
Understanding these dynamics can prevent feelings of failure attributed to diets not working. Your body, not external standards, determines your comfortable weight. Striving for unrealistic ideals can consume your life unnecessarily.
Embrace a holistic approach where listening to your body's hunger cues and ending food restriction can lead to finding your comfortable weight naturally.