Want Sustainable Weight Loss?
Ditch the Dieting Mindset!
How long have you been battling food, weight gain and emotional and binge eating? In my case it was 20 years!
I don’t use the word ‘battle’ lightly. In the battle against food, our weight, our compulsions, it may feel like we are battling an enemy far more powerful than us. Often, we end up feeling like beaten down failures, resigned to a state of hopelessness and despondency.
Have you ever considered perhaps you have been fighting the wrong enemy?
The Hidden Enemy: The Dieter’s Mindset of Deprivation and Restriction
If you are anything like me, you have probably tried many different diets, detoxes, healthy eating/nutritional plans (disguised diets for us). Most likely you did well on them for the first few weeks or even months, lost weight and then something happened, perhaps a painful life event, a simple slipping away / going off the rails and we lose control. The weight piles back on, even more than before. We end up worse than where we began.
We feel that the ‘diet’ did work, but we failed by not ‘sticking to it well enough’ or by not having enough ‘will power’. And we turn in, on our self and we wage battle on our self-worth, fuelling our sense of failure and deepening our insecurities. And then, we look towards another diet, perhaps a better diet and we repeat the cycle. Sounds familiar?
I hope this wasn’t just me.
I was in this cycle for 20 years. Statistics say I am not alone. 95% of the people who loose weight by dieting put it back on within 1-5 years. We are not anomalies. We are the norm. The best predictor of future weight gain is dieting. Of course, diets do work for a small %, 5% of the people. But by now, we know which category we belong to. After 20 years of yo-yo dieting, I had to, like all the people I have worked with, had to conclude that diets don’t actually work for me. It is only at this point, another way opened up.
The Magical Allure of Diets
Why do we need diets? In my case, I simply could not trust myself around food. We feel anxious, compulsive, tense, out of control around food. The fear of an urge to binge can be debilitating, you can end up feeling helpless and hopeless, like you are at the mercy of your compulsions. Being on a diet makes us feel safe and in control. The restrictions make us feel disciplined.
Whenever we start a new diet, there is a promise of a better future, of weight loss, of more confidence and attractiveness, of being able to get into clothes we used to be able to. It is so alluring, no matter how many times we have been let down, it is so hard to give up on a symbol of promise. Hope is a powerful thing.
Dieting and Bingeing are two sides of the same coin
Built into restriction and deprivation is losing control and rebellion. The more restrictive we are around food, the more craving and compulsions we create within ourself. The more food compulsions we have, the more we grasp at diets and food restrictions as a way of maintaining control. Can you see how we can get trapped in this vicious cycle?
The more you tell yourself ‘I can’t have this. I shouldn’t eat this. This is bad, This, has too much calories’, the more you want it. We give our power to food, our thoughts are consumed by what we can or can’t or should or shouldn’t eat. We are fearful around our so called ‘trigger’ foods. We actually become fearful of food and we can’t enjoy food without judgement, shame and guilt. Your sense of self-worth is now tied up with how well you are doing on a diet or how many ‘good’ food you are eating or what the number is on the scales. What we fail to realise is that dieting and restriction are what leads to our food compulsions and bingeing.
Exposing the sneaky enemy of Dieting
Even reading this, may brings up anxiety for you. Dieting for so long has been a familiar ‘friend’, the idea of giving up on the promise of a new diet may seem daunting. I don’t blame you. The familiar is comforting. The unknown scary. You will have to trust me and many others who have travelled the path to food freedom and weight loss by relinquishing the dieting mindset. Eventually, you will come to understand from your own experience that dieting and bingeing are two sides of the same coin. When you stretch an elastic band, it snaps back. When you restrict, you eventually loose control.
What does it mean to have food freedom?
Fundamentally, it means knowing in your heart that you are not a food addict or a binge eater. There are some therapies that suggest this, that you are broken and you will always be in recovery. I don’t agree with this. I believe that they don’t believe you can have complete food freedom, because they have not fully understood our human potential for radical transformation. You can’t think and talk your way to healing. Healing comes from deep inside by learning to access a source of peace within yourself. A source within your heart that’s deeper than your thoughts and feelings. From that space of peace, you can know that you have many habits, way of thinks, ways of relating to food, which are unhelpful. Food compulsions and food restrictions are simply habits; habitual ways of relating to food. With awareness, self kindness and practice, all habits can be broken. This is a key component of our coaching program, ‘Finally Fulfilled’. It’s incredible how people who have binged and yo-yo dieted for decades are able to break-free from their habits within weeks.
You can learn to let go of food restrictions, food compulsions and punitive ways of relating to food and yourself. You can be around your so called ‘trigger’ foods or your so called ‘guilty pleasures’ and be at ease, with a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude. Sustainable and long-lasting weight loss will come as a side effect of your relaxed, non-compulsive and peaceful relationship with food.
Vital to this process is learning to trust yourself, your body, your hunger and fullness cues whilst gaining confidence in managing difficult emotions and developing authentic self-love. A lot more on this on my other blog posts. Dealing with painful feelings are a core component of our coaching program. As you do this, you will stop giving your power over to food. You won’t need diets anymore, just as you won’t need to binge anymore. You are free to live a full life!
