Tag Archive for: miracle diets

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.

 

 

 

Drown Out the Miracle Diet Noise – Create Healthy Habits from Healthy Thoughts Instead

healthy-thoughts-quotes w textHave you ever had a day where you saw something that inspired you?  Or maybe you read something that immediately caused you to say “yes, I’m in”! Something about it caught your attention and made you want to be better, or do better.  So, you jump on board without too much thought.  But then what happens.  A hectic day full of work, carpools, food shopping, homework, cleaning, and preparing food for the family often pushes those noble thoughts out of your head and into space.

There is so much propaganda out there right now trying to get into your head to encourage you to create these grandiose plans to take dieting action.  While any healthy thought is admirable, a grandiose thought like, “I’m never going to eat bread again” can get you into trouble.  These declarations are usually too difficult to execute forever.

I’ve seen this myself.  Without calling out any particular person or company, there is one “celebrity health guru” that comes to mind.  Not a day goes by that I don’t get an email or video from her encouraging her readers to eliminate certain foods to drop the weight.  Now don’t get me wrong.  There is definitely a time and place when you might need to eliminate certain foods that are GI triggers for you, or that you are allergic to or have a food sensitivity too.  I actually work with clients who have food triggers/sensitivities and we do an elimination diet followed by food challenges to identify those triggers.

That’s not what I am referring to here.  To tell the general public to absolutely avoid certain foods (like dairy, gluten, eggs…) in order to drop the weight, well that to me will yield short term success.  Yes, when you eliminate entire food categories and the “junk food” that usually falls within that category (think cakes, cookies, white bread when eliminating gluten, and fruited high sugar yogurt when eliminating dairy), you will most definitely lose weight.  But is there a reason you should be off these food categories for life if you choose healthier options within those categories (think whole grains, whole wheat, and plain Greek yogurt)?

I think not!

What you can do when you are faced with these grandiose thoughts is to use them as a springboard for coming up with more realistic and sound thoughts that you can truly turn into action.  Do you really want to never eat bread again?  Do you think that is what is going to make you into the healthier person you want to be?

Instead, make a commitment to not denying yourself but to give yourself unconditional permission to eat what you truly want when you are hungry and stop when you are comfortably full.  Choose healthier versions of these foods for good health and you will find that you won’t even desire them that often.  Key words here…healthier versions!

As an intuitive eater, you learn what your true food preferences are.  Oftentimes, something that you thought was a trigger food for you that you could not stop eating (overeating/bingeing) may actually be a food that you realize you never really liked.

Small changes add up to big changes and instead of having a “flash in the pan” healthy moment, you will end up with a healthy lifestyle full of healthy habits that has built up over time.

I encourage you to honor every healthy thought you have.  Think about how you can turn it into a healthy habit instead of it being a passing thought that disappears because it is too big to stick.  You can turn any thought into a healthy action, just be mindful about the ones you choose.

Your turn to take action:  Turn one of your healthy thoughts into a healthy habit this week.  Please share how you did this and how you feel.