3 Reasons Dieting Shouldn’t Be Among Your 2020 Goals
What’s the best 2020 diet? The beginning of the year brings many new things: New outlook, a fresh start and new year resolutions. Many people set resolutions concerning their weight, eating habits or workout routine. Commercials and advertisements abound for quick fixes, promising excellent results and a thinner body. Family or friends or teammates can also contribute to this temptation to diet, as they flaunt their success with the latest, greatest program.
But before you go jumping on the bandwagon, take a look at the facts about dieting and the consequences it brings.
Dieting Success Rate
Dieting has a 97 percent failure rate. Yes, 97 percent. That’s really high. Dieters usually blame themselves when they can’t stick with their diet, but in reality it’s the diet that has failed them. If your mechanic failed to fix your car 97 percent of the time, would you blame yourself? Or keep going back to the same mechanic? Of course not! We need to stop blaming ourselves, and we need to ditch the diets. They don’t work.
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Dieting is like holding your breath
You’ll eventually gasp for air. Our bodies are control freaks, so if something dramatically changes in a short period of time, for example, your calorie intake, then your body will fight to maintain balance to prevent drastic weight loss. Your metabolism will slow down, your energy levels will decrease and your cravings will increase. Nobody I know wants to experience these consequences. If that’s true for you too, the solution is simple: don’t diet.
Eating Disorders
Dieting increases the likelihood of eating disorders, disordered eating and body hatred. Some of my clients innocently entered into the world of dieting, only to find themselves years and years later, with a continually confusing and rocky relationship with both food and their bodies.
Food Police Diet Tools
Weighing and measuring foods, counting points or calories, or following a restrictive meal plan are not needed for good health or a healthy weight. These are tools of the Food Police, which imposes lots of external rules, restriction and rigidity. Instead of dieting, we can tune in to our bodies and the wisdom we have there. We’ve been born with an intuitive eating system, so that our bodies know how to eat in order for us to reach and maintain a weight that is just right for our bodies.
Tune in to your body and note your hunger and fullness levels throughout the day. You can even write down some information about your eating experiences, such as, what you ate, when you ate, why (hunger, boredom, happiness, stress, etc.), where, how much. Notice how you felt afterwards and make a mental note if you would change anything. Was it satisfying and energizing? Or was it miserable and stressful? Did it leave you comfortable? Or are you still hungry and unsatisfied? Noticing what works and what doesn’t work can help you know where adjustments can be made for next time.
This year, make a resolution to NOT diet. Instead, choose to follow your intuitive wisdom, so that you’ll be able to experience a more peaceful relationship with food, improved self-esteem and body image, and better physical and emotional health. Now THAT sounds like it will bring you a much happier new year!
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