Have you thought about how many diets, detoxes, and plans you’ve tried in your lifetime? When we have new clients, on average, they’ve tried three diets, plans, or trends prior to coming to see us for sustainable solutions.
And they’re not alone!
This is becoming increasingly more common with so much information online, new trends, and new quick-fix plans coming out weekly. The 5 reasons why diets don’t work for most of us and what you could do instead to more mindfully care for your body and yourself.
WHY DIETS DON’T WORK
Most dieting, for the sake of the example of reaching a societal ideal, includes calorie deprivation. When your body is calorie deprived, a few things may happen physically and mentally:
- levels of leptin (the satiety hormone) decrease
- levels of ghrelin (the hunger hormone) increase
- ability to burn calories decreases
- mentally dieters become fixated on food
- attention and focus leans towards anything related to food
- dieters may have improved smell function and report food tastes more pleasant
- the metabolic effects of chronic dieting can last years later
These changes lead to a variety of challenges that can prevent you from maintaining this way of eating for the long term.
The first issue that comes up with diets, detoxes, and plans, which I’m sure many of you have experienced, is that dieting can take the joy and pleasure out of the food experience. Food is more than nourishment. It’s tradition, culture, pleasure, and joy and it’s okay to celebrate the many roles food plays in our lives! Every day, we cook meals that not only nourish our body but also make us so happy and filled with joy to experience.
2. Short-Term Thinking — Start and Stop Mentality
The second reason why diets fail most people so often is the short-term thinking — the 21-day this, 30-day that — what are you supposed to do after that time period? What these things fail to do is set you up for success 365 days a year. They’re designed to try to get you a big result as quickly as possible (most of it being just about the aesthetic/before and after photo or weight loss only), but they often fail to then teach you how to integrate that into your life. It’s unrealistic to think that you can or should follow such strict guidelines 365 days a year.
3. They Often Require You to Have Foods that Are Off-Limits
This goes hand-in-hand with reason number three that diets don’t work for everyone — you are asked to eliminate certain foods or food groups. We’ve been so good on our diet, but then we go out to eat or go to a social gathering and are offered foods we “can’t have” which increasingly make us hyperaware, hypersensitive, and focused on that food choice.
And that can cause two unhealthy extremes: either isolating yourself from others to avoid that temptation or completely overindulging, sometimes even to the point of feeling sick. There’s absolutely a path where foods are on a shouldn’t consume list if you have food allergies, or intolerances. Focus your energy on learning to feel comfortable around certain foods that you might typically overindulge on.
4. Diets Are One-Size-Fits-All — They Don’t Take Into Consideration Your Unique Body and Life
And that brings me to reason number four, which is that following a popular diet’s set of rules and guidelines doesn’t always align with your wants and needs and your unique life. While it may seem easy to pick a diet and follow it, because you don’t have to think about anything, you end up following rules you think you should be doing, without actually evaluating what you need in your life and why?
When you have that clarity, you will begin making decisions that align with your unique needs, rather than what someone else says.
5. They Ask You to Do Too Much All At Once, Making it Hard to Maintain
Lastly, diets often are structured in such a short time-frame that they ask you to make dozens of changes overnight. When there’s so much change all at once, it’s nearly impossible to keep up with it all. Instead, shift to slowly building up your changes and habits over time, intentionally stacking one on top of another.
This means taking that wellness vision you have for yourself and breaking it down into tiny action steps for yourself. It’s not waking up tomorrow and trying to do everything all at once. It’s taking it one item at a time and really working through it until it’s easy and fully integrated into your life.
DITCH THE SCALE AND MEASURE YOUR HEALTH IN OTHER WAYS
There are many ways to measure and reach your health goals without dieting — including ways to measure outcomes and success outside of the scale.
Some examples might include:
- blood work/labs if you’re managing a certain health condition
- to be aware of how you’re feeling day-to-day
- better digestion
- feeling more confident
- expressing creativity and joy in your life
- honoring what your physical body allows you to do (i.e. give loved ones a hug, exercises, think, work, breathe, etc.)
- eating free from distraction
- less stress around food and food choices
PUTTING THIS INTO PRACTICE
By shifting your focus from these short-term fixes to long-term solutions that stem from what you need and want in your life, you can create a healthy lifestyle that’s maintainable 365 days a year, not just for 30 days.
If shifting your mindset around this seems impossible, challenging, or really hard for you to do right now, you’re not alone. Your goal is to eat healthier, dieting isn’t the only approach. Without needing to diet so you make and the eating habits you create are maintainable 365 days a year.