Have you thought about how many diets, detoxes and plans you have tried in your life?
When we have new students join the Mindful Nutrition Method, on average, they have tried at least three diets, plans or trends before coming to see us for sustainable solutions. The key point here is that they shouldn’t work, right? Otherwise, they would not come to us afterwards.
And guess what, our students are not alone!
This is becoming more and more common with so many new trends, quick fix plans and diets coming out every week. This overflow into the health and wellness space has resulted in more and more people feeling anxious about food, overworked, and simply fed up with dieting. Can you relate?
Our mission here at Nutrition Stripped is to help you find confidence in nourishing yourself with ease so you can ditch the diets and make peace with food. To do that, we need to get off the diet and learn why these diets do far more harm than good.
Here I look at the 5 reasons why diets don’t work for most of us and discuss what you can do to take good care of your body and yourself.
Why diets don’t work
First and foremost, when we say diets, we mean choosing to adhere to food guidelines and restrictions as a result of personal choice (think cutting carbs, counting macros, or following a strict eating plan). What we’re not talking about here are medically necessary diets guided by a healthcare professional (like a low-FODMAP diet for IBS or a gluten-free diet for celiac disease).
Most diets today involve restricting caloric intake in some way, shape, or form. This may involve limiting a certain food group or simply reducing intake overall. In my experience as a Registered Dietitian and Mindful Nutrition Method Coach working with hundreds of our Mindful Nutrition Method students, I have seen the impact this can have time and time again.
When your body experiences this decrease in energy, a few things can happen both physically and mentally:
- Increased cravings for starchy carbohydrates, especially those higher in sugar
- Decreased confidence and ease around food
- A tendency to hyperfocus on food intake and food choices
- Increased food guilt, stress and anxiety
- Loss of control around certain foods
- Loss of control over certain eating scenarios
- Increase in digestive complications
These complications lead to a variety of additional challenges that can prevent you from maintaining this way of eating long-term. Let’s dive into what these are.
1. Dieting can take the joy and pleasure out of the food experience
If you know me, you’ve probably heard me say this before, and it bears repeating: food is more than just nourishment. It’s tradition, culture, pleasure and joy and it’s okay to celebrate the many roles food plays in our lives!
Every day, I cook meals that not only nourish my body, but make me so happy and full of joy to experience.
I love being alone in the kitchen or cooking with my husband Jesse. I really enjoy trying new recipes with new ingredients and then sitting down to enjoy a delicious meal (not always ‘Instagram worthy’). If we cook and eat together, we like to talk about our day and our plans for the future. It’s a great time to connect.
Food is such a powerful way to bring nourishment and joy into our lives, but unfortunately, so many diets are really strict and rigid and completely ignore that. They take the joy out of the eating experience and can make you feel like cooking is a chore or that your meals don’t satisfy you.
They can make you see food only as a means to an end and leave you constantly ‘looking forward’ to the next time you ‘can’ eat that food you really want but ‘can’t’, causing a lot of anxiety as result of focusing on what you should or shouldn’t eat.
Instead, try to focus on creating a positive, happy experience around your meals.
This could include finding recipes that excite you or even just eating at the table without devices or distractions. It could be turning on the music while you cook yourself a meal, or inviting a friend over for a little potluck night.
Reframing food in this way can help you create a whole new appreciation for fueling your body with food, love, and joy.
2. Short term thinking — start and stop mentality
The second reason diets fail so often for most people is short-term thinking. 21 days this, 30 days that. What should you do after this time?
They are designed to try to get you a great result as quickly as possible. They often fail to teach you how to integrate it into your life in a balanced way.
Move from this short-term, one-size-fits-all thinking to long-term, sustainable thinking. Make choices for yourself that you can realistically maintain for years. Ask yourself, can I do this every day? If not, don’t add it to your life.
Think about it – following a diet can be a lot of work. You have to learn the rules, buy the right ingredients, follow the meal plan, and possibly skip or work around your usual social outings. And then you end up following it for, say, 30 days.
Imagine what would happen if instead, you refocused all that time and energy on learning a new skill or developing a habit that would last you much longer than that. Maybe instead of following a trend or popular diet, you just focus your energy on cooking more at home.
It’s this kind of long-term thinking that can give you the skills to navigate your health 365 days a year.
3. They often require you to eat foods that are “off limits”
Oh boy, we’ve all been there, myself included. We have been so “good” with our diets, but then we go out to eat or go to a social gathering and they offer us foods that we “can’t have”. This makes us increasingly aware, hypersensitive and focused on this food choice. Correctly?
And this can cause two unhealthy extremes: either you isolate yourself from others to avoid this temptation or you completely overdo it, sometimes even to the point of feeling sick.
So here’s my advice, don’t follow instructions that tell you to cut out certain foods or food groups to lose weight or because someone on social media told you to because they do.
Eliminating foods for the sake of dieting without a medical need does far more harm than good. It contributes to this cycle of yo-yo dieting that starts and goes “off track” and dieting over and over again.
4. Diets are one-size-fits-all — They don’t take into account your unique body and life
Following the guidelines of a popular diet doesn’t always align with your unique wants and needs.
While it may seem easy to pick a diet and stick to it because you don’t have to think about anything, you end up following rules you think you “should” do without really evaluating what you need in your life and why.
This can create a big disconnect between your intrinsic wants and needs and what you actually do. As a result, you may feel guilty, anxious and stormed around food as opposed to feeling peaceful and comfortable.
Instead, focus on what you really want. What really works well for you and your life? Note exactly how it is healthy for you, and why you want these things in your life. Create your vision of wellness.
When you have this clarity, you will begin to make decisions that align with your unique needs rather than what someone else says.
5. They ask you to do too much at once, making it difficult to maintain
Finally, diets are often built in such a short period of time that they require you to make dozens of changes overnight. When there are so many changes at once, it’s almost impossible to keep up with them all.
Instead, switch to slowly building your changes and habits over time. You intentionally stack one on top of the other so they all work together to build a solid foundation for your lifestyle change.
This means taking that wellness vision you have for yourself and breaking it down into tiny action steps. It doesn’t mean waking up tomorrow and trying to do everything at once. You take it one item at a time and really work on it until it’s easy and fully integrated into your life.
Then move on to the next habit.
We covered a lot in this video, but if there’s one thing I want you to take away, it’s that we all have unique lifestyles and bodies to honor, but most diets, detoxes, or plans don’t take that into account.
Get off the scale and measure your health in other ways
There are many ways to measure and achieve your health goals without dieting — including ways to measure results and success off the scale. I can’t tell you how important this is! If you let the number on the scale dictate whether you’re successful or not, whether you’re happy or not, you’ll be constantly in the cycle of dieting.
Instead, focus on how you feel, the practices you engage in, the habits you’ve implemented, and the goals you’ve achieved.
Some examples may include:
- Blood work or labs if you are managing a certain health condition
- Increased energy levels
- Better digestion
- You feel more confident in general and around food
- Expressing creativity and joy in your life
- Honoring what your physical body allows you to do (eg hug loved ones, exercise, think, work, breathe, etc.)
- Eating without distractions
- You feel less stressed about food and food choices
Learn how to stop dieting and nourish yourself in a way that feels uniquely right for you
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 can be sustained 365 days a year, not just 30 days.
If changing your mindset around this seems impossible, challenging or too difficult for you right now, you are not alone.
Sign up to attend my free masterclass today where you will learn how to break free from dieting and food obsession Starting now.
You don’t need to stress and obsess about food. There is a better way, and yes, it is possible to cultivate a positive relationship with food! Join this free balanced nutrition masterclass to learn how.
