Tag Archive for: chronic dieter

The 3 Biggest Mistakes that Keep You Yo-Yo Dieting

It’s really tough to stop dieting when you’ve been dieting for so long. Even if you intellectually know that the diets have never “worked” long term for you, you are still afraid to stop.

 

This isn’t your fault. The diet industry has you believing that you have failed the diets, yet it is the other way around. The diets have failed you.

 

The data is strong. Ninety-five to 98% of dieters regain the weight they lost within 1-5 years and 1/3-2/3’s regain even more. Are you included in this statistic?

 

Weight cycling (losing and gaining, losing and gaining) is more detrimental to your health than staying at a stable weight even if that weight is “higher” than what society deems “acceptable”.

 

Yet, you continue to diet.

 

There are 3 big mistakes that keep you yo-yo dieting.

 

Here they are:

 

Mistake #1: You are Stuck in Diet Mentality

Diets can be very tempting as they promise to help you see results quickly or with a magical ingredient that helps you lose weight without even trying. Even if you think you’ve given up dieting, keep in mind that the diet mentality is very sneaky and can show up in ways you wouldn’t have thought.

For example, if you skip carbs at dinner because you ate them for breakfast and lunch, you are still dieting. If you eat a smaller lunch because you ate a larger breakfast, you are still dieting. If you skip the cocktail hour at the wedding for fear you will overeat, you are still dieting. The list goes on and on.

See if you can identify the ways the diet mentality is sneaking up on you.

 

Mistake #2: You Put Your Self-Care on the Back Burner

In the hustle and bustle of day-to-day responsibilities, do you often forget to take the time to care for yourself? Do you feel guilty if you do take care of your own needs?

I get it. You have people that rely on you. But the problem is that when you tend to others needs and ignore your own, you are serving from an empty vessel. Instead, if you fill up your own cup first, you are serving others from a place of abundance.

It’s not being selfish to take care of yourself. Does it take practice? Yes, for some people more than others. But that’s okay. You have to start somewhere.

What is one act of self-care that you will start doing for yourself?

 

Mistake #3: You Don’t Trust Your Inner Wisdom

You were born knowing exactly how to eat. We all were. But over the years, you’ve moved away from listening to that inner wisdom and instead, allowed diets and gurus to tell you what, when and how much to eat. This caused you to lose trust in yourself.

But you know what? You can learn to trust again. It takes practice, support and accountability. And it takes someone who cares about you to guide the way.

 

Let’s stop making these mistakes. Start by popping your name and email in the boxes below to Break the Spell of Diets in 3 Days.

 

Let me know if you have any questions along the way.

 

 

3 Steps to Food Autonomy

Food is a very personal choice for you. What you choose to eat, why you choose to eat it and how you choose to eat it are decisions YOU get to make around the food you eat. However, there are 2 groups of people that do not honor this choice. In today’s blog, I will shed light on who these people are.

 

 Group #1: Chronic Dieters

A chronic dieter is someone who has been on and off multiple diets over their lifetime chasing a certain body weight, dress size or body shape. As a chronic dieter, you believe that the answer to all your food and weight problems lies in the diet you follow. So each time a new diet comes to market, you get excited and truly believe that THIS will be THE ONE. Unfortunately, even if you do lose weight, you know the way this story ends. You regain the weight lost plus some extra pounds just for good measure.

 

You no longer are confident in making food choices for yourself. You are so used to following a plan, a menu or rules that have been dictated to you, that when it comes time for you to figure out what you want to eat, you really don’t know the answer to (what should be) a simple question. You have given away your food autonomy.

 

Group #2: “Health Coaches”

The internet is swarming with people who call themselves health coaches. Maybe they took a 90 hour health coach course, or a 3 month certificate program, either way they are now “health coaches”. In my opinion, most of them do more harm than good. They give you lists of foods to eat and not to eat, rules to follow, and they spout inaccurate information about grains, dairy and gluten. Some will tell you they are teaching you intuitive eating, but it’s really disguised in a diet as they are giving you rules and telling you what to eat.

 

These health coaches are taking away YOUR free choice around food.

 

Health Coaches aka Diet Coaches

There’s a particular group of these health coaches who I’m thinking about as I write this blog. They lost weight on a liquid diet program (I won’t mention the name of one of the programs I’m thinking about when I write this, but if you think hard enough, you can probably guess) and then they “train” with the company to be a health coach. They are big marketers, telling you how amazing their diet is to lose weight and posting before and after pictures to hook you in.

 

In speaking with these health coaches (yes, I’ve had conversations with them), they demonize gluten, sugar, and dairy and speak about how they eat as if they have an “I’m better than thou” attitude. But they also slip and say things like “oh my gosh, that pastry looks divine. If I take one bite, I’ll eat the entire plate”, and “I don’t eat gluten except for _____ (fill in the blank) once a week because I just love it and then I start again the next day”. (Disclaimer – I’m not saying this about ALL health coaches, but many that I come in contact with).

 

These statements are reflective of the diet mentality and food battles that rage on!

 

3 Steps to Food Autonomy

  1. Stop dieting! I know this is so hard because diets feel safe to you. However, they have never worked for you and they never will, so it’s time to take a leap of faith and say NO MORE. You have the power within yourself to make your own food choices. I know you do, and I also know that you might not believe that right now. That’s okay. One step at a time.

 

  1. Stop listening to others! Decide that you will no longer listen to those health coaches that are telling you what to eat and not to eat. Instead, seek out a reputable registered dietitian nutritionist who is also a certified intuitive eating counselor who can help you get back into the drivers seat when it comes to food and your body.

 

  1. Do connect with a community! It’s lonely when you are swimming upstream alone. We are all surrounded by people steeped in diet culture. It’s likely that your inner circle of family and friends don’t understand when you say you are not dieting anymore. Come join the ladies in the Intuitive Eating Mastery Circle for the comradery and support that will help you take charge of your food choices again. As a reader of my blog, you get 50% off your membership. No commitment, you can cancel at any time.

 

Being in charge of your own food choices is your birthright. Take it back today. I’m here to help you. All you have to do is ask.

 

Shutting Down the Food Police

Do you have a set of unreasonable rules that dieting has created? Is your head constantly filled with chanting words that promote or demote you from eating food that you love?

 

This is the “food police” voice that is constantly telling you what you should and shouldn’t eat. It’s sort of like the angel and the devil sitting on your shoulders, one telling you it’s okay to eat the chocolate cake, but the other yelling “NO” don’t do it.

 

Let’s say you decided to have that chocolate cake and the “devil” is sitting on your shoulder beaming with pride because you followed her advice. But, as soon as you eat that cake you feel guilty about the amount of calories and fat that you just consumed. Even though you enjoyed the chocolate cake, you still feel guilty.

 

Most chronic dieters have this sense of guilt each and every time they eat something that the “food police’ is saying they shouldn’t.

 

This is the voice that can make it hard to choose foods your body is really asking for.

 

The media and various companies place thoughts in your head related to nutrition and ways to “cheat” and make yourself feel guiltless because of the way these food items are advertised. The slogans and jingles are created to convince you that this cookie will prevent you from being “bad” on your diet, and will keep you on track.

 

These are the advertisements that cause you to have negative food thoughts and judgments towards food.

 

You are not born with these food judgments; you develop them over the years of dieting and being influenced by the media (or friends/family) penetrating these images of good vs. bad in your head.

 

The next time you pick up a food item that you enjoy and you contemplate “should I or shouldn’t I”, take a moment to listen to your body and the food talk going on in your head.

 

Push away the negative thoughts and change the tape that plays in your head. If this is a food that you truly desire, go ahead and enjoy it without guilt in a very mindful way. Eat the food slowly, truly savoring each bite. Put your fork down between each bite and let the food settle in your body. Describe the texture of the food? How does it taste? Are you enjoying each bite?

 

When you start to eat food mindfully, you’ll learn your true food preferences and be able to identify fullness more easily because you are giving your body the time to talk to you.

 

It is important to realize that this one food eaten in this one moment will not make you gain weight. You may actually find that you don’t love the chocolate cake as much as you thought you did.

 

Are you stuck in a dieter’s mindset due to your “food police” and negative self-talk? I can help you reframe that negative talk and turn it into something powerful. You can change your thoughts and get rid of the guilt around food!

 

Head over to TalkWithBonnie.com and answer a few questions – we’ll pick a time to talk that works best for you.

 

The 3 Pieces of the Chronic Dieting Puzzle, Why it Doesn’t Work and the Puzzle that Does

Obedience, willpower, and failure are three connecting pieces to a chronic dieters puzzle. Once you have one set in stone, the other two follow. I call this a “puzzle” because as a chronic dieter you believe that you need all three pieces to feel good about yourself and to get to a satisfying weight.

 

What if I told you that this is not the case? What if I told you that these three components are actually lethal to your health, and cause you to get trapped in the dieting cycle over and over again?

 

Let’s start with “obedience”. Say for example you have a new pet (how about a dog) and you are training your dog. You teach the dog what he can and cannot do (a set of rules if you will) and when the dog is not obedient, you punish the dog for bad behavior. For example, you tell the dog he cannot enter the living room when you are not home. You arrive home and your couch is all chewed up. Now you punish the dog by putting up a gate at the living room entrance because the dog was not obedient, the dog was “a bad dog”.

 

Now relate this to yourself. You are following a particular diet this month which lists for you foods that you can and cannot eat.  You are following a list of rules with do’s and don’ts. Yet, you eat the very food you are told not to eat (let’s say, pizza) and you tell yourself you’ve been “bad”, you weren’t obedient to the rules. You vow never to do this again.  Guess what? That’s not going to happen. You will absolutely eat that pizza again at some point in time. No one or thing can tell you how you feel and what you should eat. You are the expert of your body! You should be responsible for when, what, and how much you eat. So, let’s forget about obedience.

 

The second piece of the chronic dieter’s puzzle is “willpower”. Let’s take the party scene for example. Whenever you go to a party do you find yourself staring at the dessert table, drooling over everything that you love but have vowed to never eat again? You keep telling yourself you don’t need all the calories, just have willpower. You try and walk away but end up overindulging because you have starved your body from those desserts for a few weeks or even longer. Willpower is not a component of intuitive eating. You have natural desires, we all do. And to try and will yourself away from them just ends in disaster. Forget the willpower and listen to your own body’s signals because that will bring you back to your natural instincts, which you have lost through the dieting schemes.

 

The final piece of the chronic dieter’s puzzle is “failure”. This is what you feel once obedience and willpower have once again failed you through this dieting process. So you in turn overindulge and gain back all the weight that you lost, and sometimes even more. Newsflash: you are not the one that failed; the diets are what have failed.

 

Should I say that again? You are not a failure, nor will you ever be with intuitive eating.

 

You need to start working on a NEW PUZZLE.

 

THE INTUITIVE EATING PUZZLE. There are only three pieces to this puzzle.

 

Puzzle piece #1:          A Healthy Non-Diet Mindsetweightlosspuzzleviolet

Puzzle piece #2:          Nutrition Education

Puzzle piece #3:          Caring Support

 

Does it sound difficult? Well, nothing in life comes easy. But it is truly your solution if you want to finally break free of the pain of dieting and achieve the body that you love.

 

Now it’s your turn to take action: Contact me for your FREE Break Free of Dieting Strategy Session so you can put your INTUITIVE EATING Puzzle together effortlessly.