Diets for weight loss suck. They suck a lot.. But we do them anyway, right?
We eat “bad”, we gain a little, we feel guilty, we diet, we fall off track, we eat again, we gain more, we get upset, we diet harder this time, we cleanse, we binge more, we regret more, we eat more… It’s a tough cycle to end.
We just want that before & after right? And we want that “after” to finally stick!
So let’s chat about it. Here are the bad, the ugly, & the horrendous facts about dieting.
First, diets by definition are simply the foods a person chooses to habitually eat.
But over the years, we have also not just defined the word as a noun but it is a verb. As a verb it means “ to restrict oneself to small amounts or special kinds of food in order to lose weight.” according to the dictionary.
Most diets are based on one premise - the caloric deficit. Diets for weight loss are all about consuming less calories than your body burns generally in a day.
Same with exercise; we burn more through exercise to create caloric deficit. Do both and the formula yields weight loss. It's simple and straightforward.
We disregard other factors that play a key role like genetics, hormones, physical limitations, & medical conditions.
If you’re one of those people who say “no matter what I do….” you’ll need to know the harsh truths about dieting.
REASON 1- “All or Nothing”
The “all or nothing” mentality is a sure fire way to completely suck at dieting a super-sucky diet plan. If you are completely going out of your usual eating routine by cutting down your calories tremendously or cutting out entire food groups, you will burnout and give up altogether. You basically dieted too hard, too fast.
REASON 2 - “Not sustainable”
Building on REASON 1, “all or nothing” is not sustainable. Slashing the cals can work quite well short-term but the physical body just burns out, especially when you are burning it out through intense exercise. It’s like driving a car and the E signal turns on but you never stop to pull yourself over to get gas. Eventually, it just stops working and kills the car.
Slashing calories for a long term wreaks havoc on the metabolism; the stress of dieting creates hormonal imbalance thereby making dieting counter productive. (Not to mention potentially causing a slew of other harmful conditions to the body).
Ask yourself, “can I diet like this for the rest of my life?” If the answer is no, then stop that diet.
REASON 3 - “Restriction out of punishment”
Are you eating in a way out of punishment for indulging? Are you restricting yourself out of guilt?
Imagine a bird in a cage. That bird has a certain amount of food. Stays within the cage quietly until it one day its owner forgetfully leaves the cage open. What happens? The bird finds freedom and flies away to never return, no matter how loving and nurturing the owner was. The bird instinctively knows they are not supposed to live in that cage. … Free as a bird.
Same with us. We are not meant to punish ourselves within the cage of extreme dieting.This may explain the reason behind yo-yo dieting. Intuitively we are not meant to stay in that place of restriction.
REASON 4 - “Dieting is expensive”
I’m specifically referring to the dieting programs & plans that make you purchase supplements, shakes & detoxes. You become dependent on them and they get too expensive to maintain over time.
Not only have you done “all or nothing”, felt like the program is unsustainable, and have been restricting yourself by replacing meals with shakes and slashing your calories drastically, your pocket has a deep hole.
Once you get off these programs, you find yourself lost in how to eat, because you never learned how to eat “right for you” to begin with.
REASON 5 - “There actually is no deficit”
To lose weight, there must be a caloric deficit - healthy clean foods or not. I mean you can be on a Starbucks diet and still lose weight (I don’t condone that!). Unless you track every single thing you eat and drink, you’ll never truly know how much you’re consuming. You can be eating healthy food like avocados not knowing how calorically dense that fruit is.
The truth is you’ll need to understand your portions (in general), understand which foods fuel your body and satiate you, (Like carrots alone just don’t do it for me!), know not to restrict then binge, and know when to STOP if you’re full.
Need a calorie deficit? Go ahead and do the workouts on my YouTube Channel, subscribe and turn on the bell notification. Get your mind out of the diet cycle and start doing fitness that empowers & strengthens you! Once you do, you’ll begin to make better food choices for you, without feeling like a failure.
Want to work more closely together, check out our programs. #irockthesportsbra.
What are your thoughts on diets? Comment and let’s discuss how we can make better choices.