The New Year has passed, your resolution to lose weight has run its course once again. You did your best to diet, perhaps you lost some weight, but you couldn’t keep it up. Eventually, you ate those forbidden foods and couldn’t stop. Once again, you ate everything you shouldn’t have and you are starting to gain back the weight. You failed again.
Wait!
You didn’t fail the diet, the diet failed you!
The diet will always fail you because diets don’t work. When you diet, you stop listening to your body and start listening to what others say you “should” or “shouldn’t” eat. You receive these messages from so many places (doctors, diet creators, mothers, fathers, friends, grandparents, siblings, nutritionists, magazines, TV, radio, the internet, personal trainers, even therapists). As children, you know exactly what your body wants and needs. You eat when you are hungry and stop when you are full. As you grow up, you begin to trust others more than yourself. You start to diet because you think that is how you become a good, successful, attractive person.
Dieting doesn’t keep you from not thinking about your favorite foods, you think about them more.
What does a diet tell you to do? Eat this, don’t eat that, this is good for you, that is bad. Have you noticed that the “bad” food is usually always your favorite foods? Even if you love the “good” food, if you eat it long enough, love goes from like, to boredom, to I never want to eat this again.
So, when you stop eating the food you love because the diet tells you to, you may lose some pounds, but, the eventually stops. What happens? You eat your favorite foods again. However, you rarely will just eat a little of it. Your body and mind think you starved yourself of it and now you can’t get enough. You eat more and more. It may become an obsession.
So, you go back on the diet, you think you don’t know if you can ever eat it again (because the “diet” said it was bad for you) and so you binge on it just before the diet. You all know this… the “my diet starts tomorrow” philosophy.
In addition, when you do “lose it” and start bingeing on the “bad” foods (even just thinking about the food can trigger this for some), you think you are bad, or undisciplined for eating it. Of course, for many, that bad feeling just leads to more bingeing.
And, there you are, right in the middle of the binge/purge cycle. Even if you don’t use vomiting to purge, you purge emotionally just by beating yourself up for eating. “Bad food” becomes “Bad me”. Bad me leads to bingeing.
Diets don’t work. In fact, diets can even make you fatter. Researchers are finally looking into the diet phenomenon and discovering this. Dieting certainly can leave you feelings more out of control with food. And, studies show that people who diet gain more weight over time. This yo-yo weight gain and loss can lead to more health problems as it is hard on your body to go through this cycle.
Lastly, not dieting is way more fun! Imagine eating what you want and having your favorite foods in the house for weeks, without fearing you will eat it all in one sitting! It is absolutely possible and a great way to live your life.
Suggested Exercise:
Pick your favorite food and eat it as much as you want! Give yourself full permission to eat it and to enjoy it.
Notice and pay attention to when you start to get bored with it, this may even take less than one week. Notice as your favorite food becomes less and less appealing until you don’t even crave it anymore. Don’t worry, though, you will crave it again.
What you will notice is that when you let yourself eat what you want, the crazy feeling you have toward food will naturally lessen. You won’t be eating it out of reaction to feeling bad about yourself or because you’re not supposed to eat it. You now have a choice about eating it.
Learn more about this cycle and how to end it. Purchase my audio program “Food is Not the Enemy: Eat What You Want” at www.foodisnottheenemy.com/products.html