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Like a professional dietitian, the most common emails I get from my readers (other than the compliments of those who agree with me and the angry messages from people who really do not) are messages that ask me what is the best way to follow a diet to lose weight.
The thing is, I do not prescribe diet per se. (I do not give advice over the Internet to people who are not clients, sorry!) If a client comes to me with a weight loss goal, we explore his desire to lose weight together to understand their motivations . To do this, their attitudes towards food and nutrition, and, if I feel that they are in a psychologically healthy place, we come to an agreement on how to help them achieve their goals in a healthy way (physically and mentally) and sustainable way.
So, why not prescribe weightloss Plans? To begin, most fail long-term. Many studies show that the majority of people who lose weight will recover in the next few years. But thanks to countless messages about ideal bodies and weight loss, many of us are tempted to keep trying the next diet, in the hope that it will eventually be the one who delivers. (Spoiler alert: it will not work.) That brings me to the next reason why I do not prescribe a diet: it is that people feel miserable. Most diets require keeping a strict record of everything you eat, limiting calories, macronutrients, or both, and following so many strict rules that it's natural to start feeling helpless . It's a terrible way to feel and it often leads to losing ground, which takes you back to square one when you decided it was time to go on a diet.
Nobody should have to live like this.
If all this sounds familiar to you and you're ready to escape from the weight loss arena, I've taken the first step (which honestly contains the complete solution).
Get rid of the diet mentality.
I realize that the idea of never following a diet could be scary and that it may take a little while to relax and think about never dieting again. Trust me when I say, it's worth it.
If the statistics on the failure of the plans were not convincing enough, consider the cost to our emotional, physical, social and financial health. On how many dinners with friends did you insist – or worse, omit – because you watch what you eat or follow certain dietary rules? How many books have you lost, won, lost and won over the years? How much anxiety did you endure because you did not know if you were sticking to your dietary rules? And how many dollars have you spent over the years on special foods, pills, supplements and diet books? If you feel confident, read on.
Here are my best tips for stopping dieting forever.
1. From this moment, no food is forbidden.
Do you know that once you are told that you are not allowed to have something, you want it right away? This is the "forbidden fruit" syndrome, characteristic of virtually all diets. Most of us are aware of this situation, but as a reminder, we find something like this: you think you're on a diet, no cake is allowed. You suddenly want a cake. Wherever you go, you see cake. You try to ignore the cake, but you feel miserable and pissed at not being able to take it. You blame yourself for having it so bad and tell you to be "good". You finally collapse and eat cake. You eat a lot more than you would have a few days back when you started to feel like it. You feel completely guilty and swear that you will be "good" tomorrow. You come back to being "good," which means coming back to not having what you want. You want cake.
See the cycle? It's miserable! The best way to get rid of the "banned fruit" factor is to afford all foods. No labels, no good or bad foods, because really, no food is good or bad. It's just food. When you allow yourself a more permissive diet, you could start by going too far in eating foods that you have always considered prohibited. Do not worry, a few days or weeks after eating beyond the point of satiation are far less impressive than the years of mental and physical punishment resulting from a chronic diet. Once you have finally abandoned the rules of your diet, the "do not eat" foods will become much less irresistible. Of course, you may still have a soft spot for peanut butter fudge ice cream, but if you know that you can have it at any time, you will be less inclined to obsess it.
If you want an extra resource with tips and exercises to help you, the revolutionary book Eating Intuitive is a good place to start.
2. Rewrite your signals of hunger and fullness.
If you've relied on apps and meal plans to tell you when and how much to eat, it may have blunted your ability to simply know when you're feeling hungry or satiated. If you want to get rid of the dietary mentality, you will just find these innate indications. They are in there, I promise!
I always recommend using a hunger and fullness scale to determine your hunger and satiety. Think of hunger on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 not being hungry at all and 10 being as uncomfortably full as possible. The purpose of using the scale is to start eating around 3 or 4 and stop at 6 or 7.
Remember, hunger exists for a reason: your body needs to be fed! Just as you would not want to ignore the other innate signals of your body, like the urge to pee, do not ignore your hunger signals. Finding the feeling of being really hungry will help you feed your body properly.
3. Understand that eating is sometimes something we do for reasons other than hunger, and that's good.
We tend to think that eating emotionally is a bad thing that happens only when we're sad or stressed, but that's not necessarily the case. You can eat with emotion when you are happy, when you are anxious or when you are angry. Sometimes your diet may not be emotional. it may be because a food looks good and you want to taste it. This behavior is normal, as long as it is not the only adaptation mechanism in your toolbox. Trying to suppress eating out of hunger can lead to feelings of guilt when this happens. If this happens too often and you have no other way to deal with your emotions than to eat, now is the time to seek the help of a professional.
4. Get help with any underlying problem regarding food and diet.
There is a reason why we do everything we do, including eating. The way we eat and think about food is influenced by many factors, most of which are not (or only) related to the foods themselves. Some of these things may be the way we were raised to see food, eat and our bodies. And this is especially true for people who have been subjected to the diet or who have suffered offensive remarks about their bodies early in life. These things have an impact on our eating habits and our long-term body image. It can be very helpful to get professional help to unpack all of this in order to change the "why" and not to continue to punish you for your appearance and to put a short-term dressing on it by following a diet. after the diet.
If you have difficulty eating more intuitively and your food-related problems seem insoluble and / or intrusive, consider hiring a professional who can help, guide you and provide you with the support you need. .
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