yo-yo dieting Archives - Diet Free Radiant Me | Intuitive Eating | Emotional Eating

How to Avoid the One Last Diet Trap

You realize that the diets you’ve been on all these years have not served you well. More than likely the weight that you lost found you again. It’s depressing and you feel distraught. You really want to lose this weight once and for all.

But the diets haven’t worked. Well, maybe they worked short term, meaning you did lose weight when you followed them. But that weight loss was short-lived (research shows dieters regain weight within 1-5 years).

You’ve heard about the anti-diet approach to eating. But somehow, that doesn’t sound logical to you. From what you’ve read on the internet, Intuitive Eating means eat what you want, when you want. (Nah, that’s not what Intuitive Eating is at all. I’ll get into that on another blog)

Either way, you’ve decided to look into Intuitive Eating, after all, what do you have to lose. As you consider “trying” Intuitive Eating, the thought of maybe you’ll go on one more diet to lose those X pesky pounds, and then do “Intuitive Eating”. This is what is called – falling into the “one last diet trap.”

What is the One Last Diet Trap?

This is when you decide to give up dieting to learn to become an Intuitive Eater. But your friend, colleague, coworker, mother etc. just called to say they started a new diet and it’s amazing, you should do it too.

You think about it and consider it. Maybe, just maybe, THIS will be the diet that will help you lose the weight. You decide to try this one last diet, then you’ll start Intuitive Eating.

You have just fallen into the trap!

Don’t Ignore the Facts

Falling for that one last diet ignores the facts that:

Diets do not work. For the 3-5% of people that may keep the weight off, they exhibit disordered eating and exercise habits to do so.

The studies are clear. Approximately 95% – 97% of dieters eventually regain the weight they lost and up to 2/3rds gain back more weight than they initially lost.

You will not find one study that shows that intentional weight loss leads to long-term weight loss.

Rebound weight gain is defined as the regaining of weight you lost, plus more. This weight regain has absolutely nothing to do with a lack of willpower, discipline, or not following the rules you were told to follow! The fact of the matter is that your body was not programmed to be restricted. The more you restrict, the greater the rebound weight gain!

Dieting causes your body to go into survival mode. When your body doesn’t get enough fuel, it thinks “Oh my! I need to go into survival mode. There is a threat, a famine is coming!” Your body will do anything it can to “survive” when it is not receiving the proper nutrients. When your body goes into survival mode, your metabolism decreases and you actually gain more weight!

Bottom Line:

The most predictable outcome of yo-yo dieting is weight cycling (losing and regaining the same weight over and over again).

Yo-yo dieting and weight cycling is detrimental to your physical and mental health!

Come join me in the 5 Day Challenge to END THE YO-YOING and learn how you can STOP the diet roller coaster once and for all!

What’s will you learn in the END THE YO-YOING Challenge?

CLICK HERE to learn more and register – for free!

We start February 1, 2021!

A Focus on Habits, Not Weight: A Case Study

Some people think that because I don’t “sell” weight loss, I’m against if you lose weight.

This is just not true.

What I don’t support is intentionally pursuing weight loss through dieting and restriction.

The reason? Because dieting causes weight gain. Think of all the times you’ve lost weight on a diet. How long did that weight stay off? My bet is that within a few years (if not sooner), that weight came back, plus some.

When you restrict your food, count your calories, and track every morsel of food you eat with the sole focus on losing weight, the focus is on all the external forces that manipulate your food intake and how you can shrink your body. The focus is not on the reasons why you eat and how you eat. The focus is not on behaviors that support or don’t support good health. And that’s why the pounds inevitably come back.

Let me explain further with a case study.

A Case Study

J.B. is a 60-year-old man who contacted me at the start of the pandemic. He shared with me that for the past 30 years, his wife has been nagging him to change his eating habits and lose weight. But he had no interest.

A health scare changed all that. He wasn’t feeling well and visited the urgent care center. The doctor took his blood pressure and asked him what medication he was on. He said he hasn’t taken his medication in over a year. The doctor’s response: “do you want to make your wife a widow?”

That was enough for him to reach out to me and make an appointment. I told him at the first session that we will NOT be focusing on weight loss. Instead we will focus on how to best nourish himself, identify his habits that have not been supportive of good health, and also look at how he handles stress, his sleep pattern, and of course, movement. We did this within The 5 Step Nutrition Pillar Program.

Fast forward 8 months, J.B.’s blood pressure is within target levels, his blood glucose has come down to normal levels, and he has lost 43 pounds. The only reason he knows the number of pounds he lost is because he went for a check-up at the doctor and he got weighed. Otherwise, not once in the 8 months did he get on a scale or did we discuss weight loss.

J.B. is amazed that he can turnaround his health without feeling restricted. He is eating delicious satisfying meals and if he wants dessert, he eats it. The difference is, now he is skilled at tuning into his hunger and fullness, respecting those cues, and has more energy at 60 years old than he has had in years! And he takes his time eating, often eating even slower than his wife! This helps him have the greatest pleasure in his meals.

Weight loss is not a behavior. It’s an outcome of habit and behavior change.

In Summary:

Pursuing weight loss → leads to yo-yo dieting and disordered eating → body dissatisfaction → worsens health

Focusing on habit changes → leads to nourishing your body → body appreciation → improved health

If you’re ready to improve your health, without a focus on weight, check out The 5 Step Nutrition Pillar Program, and Contact me.

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.

How Can You Tell When You’re Feeling Satisfied?

This week’s Intuitive Eating Wednesday Question comes from Kristy, a member in my online community.

She asks:

“How can you tell when you’re satisfied??”

A short straight to the point question. But often so difficult for someone to figure out.

Kristy is referring here to when she is eating a meal, how does she determine when she is satisfied enough to stop eating.

If you’re someone who has dieted for quite some time, then likely you’re also struggling with not being able to hear your fullness signals. The mere act of dieting causes your signals to atrophy.

Why?

Because you aren’t using them. You are stopping your meal when the diet plan tells you that you have had enough. You are pushing the plate away when it’s empty. You are putting your fork down based on a limit imposed on you by an outside source. This means, it’s a source external from your internal signals that truly guide your eating.

Remember, you were born an intuitive eater. You were born knowing when you were hungry to start eating, and when you felt satisfied to stop eating. You didn’t need to ask this question, because it was just a feeling you had. And, you TRUSTED it, because you knew no other way but to trust your body.

All these years and oh so many diets later, you no longer feel those signals. And, you don’t have that trust in yourself either.

Which makes it so difficult to know when you’re truly satisfied enough to stop eating.

Okay, so you get this. But now what?

I’m not going to tell you how to feel your signals. This is something you need to relearn. And it IS POSSIBLE, with the right support, as you travel down your intuitive eating journey.

But before you do, you must do these 5 things:

Make the commitment to never diet again.

Re-affirm this commitment to never diet again.

Stay strong in this commitment even though you are surrounded by diet culture and its harmful messages (and family and friends that might be dieting and want some company).

Move away from determining success on your journey based on a number on a scale.

Re-affirm your commitment to never diet again

You see, if there’s any part of you that is still holding on to “maybe that will help me lose a few pounds”, then you will turn intuitive eating into the hunger-fullness diet (aka ‘The Intuitive Eating Diet’).

I’ve seen this happen way too many times. So, check in with yourself and ask yourself if you’re truly ready to leave your dieting habit and the scale behind.

Let me know in the comments below.

I’m Dieting But I’m Still Gaining Weight

You’re standing in front of the mirror having changed your clothes three times already this morning. Nothing seems to fit right. You are discouraged and start with the negative self-talk you are all too familiar with. “Why can’t I just stick to my diet”, you say to yourself. “I am such a failure; I will never succeed at weight loss”. “Tomorrow I will start my diet again”.

Does this sound familiar to you? If you have been battling your weight for some time, then likely you have been on countless diets that have not worked long term and you have gotten very good at berating yourself for your failures. The commercials all sound so promising! The radio ads promise fat burning powers of the miracle pills you just bought at the health food store. Why aren’t you able to lose weight?

The answer lies in the fact that you are dieting.

Let me repeat that!

The answer lies in the fact that you are dieting.

You see, nobody lives on a diet. One goes on a diet but eventually goes off the diet.

The Stats You Know

Forty to 50% of American women are trying to lose weight and are on a diet at any point in time. Half of pre-teen and teenage girls are on diets. However, 95% -97% of all dieters regain their lost weight and more within 1 to 5 years.

These are very alarming statistics because dieting clearly doesn’t work and repeated “yo-yo” dieting has been shown to have negative health effects, including an increased risk of heart disease and long-lasting effects on the metabolism.

The Side Effects of Dieting

Dieting makes you preoccupied with food; what you ate yesterday, this morning, 1 hour ago, and what you will eat later and tomorrow. Dieting makes food the enemy and causes guilty feelings when you don’t eat diet-type foods.

When you go on a diet, you are in essence putting your body into a short-term starvation state. When given the first opportunity to really eat what you desire, you will often experience a feeling of such intensity that any initial thoughts of wanting to be thin fly out the window. You feel out of control, guilty, and view yourself as having no willpower.

However, listen up!

This type of eating in response to semi-starvation is actually normal. It has nothing to do with willpower! When you are underfed, you will obsess about food. Period!

The best solution to achieving peace with food and your body is to embrace an intuitive eating approach to food. Intuitive eating is eating based on your physiological hunger and satiety cues not based on situations or emotional cues. So, that means eating when you are hungry and stopping when you are satisfied or comfortably full.

Now, I recognize that for the chronic yo-yo dieter, this is not necessarily easy. It requires you to explore how you got to where you are today in your eating habits and understand deeply what it means to become an intuitive eater. During this process, it is important for you to begin to get rid of the diet mentality that you have, and to truly believe that you will never diet again. If you continue to think there is “just one more diet, this time I’ll be good”, then you won’t be able to move forward to becoming an intuitive eater. You will continue to have foods that are “good” and “bad” and you will continue to think of yourself as being “on” or “off”.

To help you get started on the path of intuitive eating, commit to the following 3 steps:

Throw out all the diet books and pre-printed menus from magazines that you have tried over the years. Make a commitment to yourself that you will no longer be tempted by new diets that come out because you are committed to learning to listen to your body.

Get rid of the bathroom scale. Do you weigh yourself every morning or even several times per day? Does the number on the scale influence your mood for the day? Most likely it does, even if you don’t consciously realize it. Your weight fluctuates day to day and is a measure of more than just fat. It includes your bones, organs, muscle and substances such as water, food and waste that pass through your system. Begin to measure your success by other factors other than the scale such as improved blood work, blood pressure, mood, energy level and overall satisfaction with your progress toward becoming an intuitive eater.

Seek out caring support to help you on your journey. Becoming an intuitive eater is a process and the amount of time it takes will depend on how long you have been dieting, how strong your diet mentality is, how long you have been using food to cope with your emotions and how willing you are to trust yourself. It is very important for you to surround yourself with like-minded people who can provide positive feedback and support.

You were born with the natural instinct to eat when hungry and stop when full. Chances are you lost this ability due to all the diets you tried and the media exposure to quick-fixes. You can reclaim what you were born with and achieve guilt-free eating, a body you love and a life free of dieting. Intuitive eating is the answer you have been looking for.

Reach out to me if you are interested in going from Dieter to Intuitive Eater! There’s no shame in asking for help!

I Want OFF this Roller Coaster Yo Yo Diet Ride

I’m sure it feels like everyone you know is starting a new diet or workout regime this month. In the past I’m sure that even YOU have fallen into the hypnosis of the “January start a new diet” trend set by the diet industry. I want to challenge you to try a different approach to your health this year.

The truth is that every “new diet” you see is actually the same. There is always going to be the latest trend hitting the internet or newsstands. But at the end of the day, all diets have one thing in common: someone other than yourself is telling you what to eat, when to eat, and how to eat. And truth be told, they aren’t going to help you feel better about your relationship with food OR yourself.

So, let’s not kick off 2016 with a cloud of dieting thoughts over your head, okay? It’s time to jump OFF the diet roller coaster and to start listening to your inner wisdom. Who better to listen to than your own body?

Okay, so this sounds all great, right? And the new programs that are being marketed now are calling themselves “Lifestyle Programs”. But let me let you in on a little secret. Those “Lifestyle Programs” are just fancy names for diets. They say they want to help you make lifestyle changes, but they are still giving you lists of foods to eat and not to eat.

Oh, by the way, don’t even get me started on those doctors with Harvard degrees that are promoting “Detoxes”. Give me a break! Anyone is going to lose weight if they drink these concoctions for a week or a month. Then what happens after the detox is over? You know what happens….

But I divert. Let me get back on course here.

If you are riding this diet roller coaster, you’re probably unintentionally making 3 common mistakes that are preventing you from losing weight forever.

I explain these 3 biggest mistakes in my new video series. Click HERE to learn more about the mistakes you are making that keep you glued to the seat of the roller coaster, AND find out how you can get off.

Oh, and feel free to share this blog with other friends and family members who want off this roller coaster ride too!

Discover the 3 Mistakes that Keep You Glued to the Seat of the Roller Coaster HERE.

Resources and Support for Yo-Yo Dieters and Emotional Eaters

How do you feel about seeking help for things that aren’t always going so right in your life?

Whether it be relationship tension, marital problems, school issues, work-related problems, do you suffer alone and try to figure it out by yourself, or do you seek the guidance of a professional who can be objective and help you work through the difficult times?

There is often a stigma around seeking help and many people feel like they should just be able to handle it on their own.

Are you one of those people?

I’m specifically talking here about getting help to overcome emotional eating and years of yo-yo dieting. One of my clients recently confessed to me that she had my phone number for a long time but didn’t call me until recently because she was embarrassed. She felt that she should be able to lose the weight and keep it off without having to seek professional help. When she realized that time after time she was unsuccessful with dieting, she finally called me and made an appointment.

As she reflected on the experience, she realized that she wasted so many years and wished she had started this journey a long time ago. But even so, she is so glad that she finally called me and got over the shame she felt for not being able to do it by herself.

You are a strong person and probably accomplished in many areas of your life. But if you are struggling with yo-yo dieting and emotional eating, give yourself the gift of seeking the support you need to jump over the hurdles. You may even know where your specific struggles lie, but you just need the strategies and the right partner.

You don’t have to go it alone!

I have a number of Free Resources to help you.

E-book: 5 Steps to a Body You Love Without Dieting available by putting your name and email in the boxes to the right of this page, or at http://DietFreeZone.com

The Diet Free Zone Show™ on my YouTube Channel, released on the first and third Wednesday of every month. Each episode discusses another aspect of intuitive eating and breaking free of dieting. Check it out here and subscribe to my channel.

Private Facebook Support Group – The Diet Free Zone™ with Bonnie R. Giller. Request to join for free here.

To Your Health e-Newsletter – published twice per month. To subscribe for free, send an email to bonnie@brghealth.com and write “Subscribe me to your newsletter” in the Subject line.

I look forward to having you in my community. Please comment below and let me know how I can best support you.

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