It’s time to say goodbye to dieting and ditch the diet mentality.
Are you tired of diets that involve strict rules and guidelines? What if I told you that you didn’t have to go on a strict diet to eat in a way that nourishes your body?
The first step to embracing intuitive eating is ditching the diet mentality. This means un-following dieting Instagram accounts, throwing away any detox/ rigid meal plans, and focusing on health behaviors rather than weight loss.
Click here to read What Is Intuitive Eating if you are not sure what Intuitive Eating means.
There are a lot of good reasons to ditch dieting for good:
- Dieting doesn’t lead to long term weight loss for most people. Research supports that the majority of people who lose weight on diets regain their weight or more within a year.
- There are harmful possible side effects of dieting. Most people don’t talk about these side effects, which include slowed metabolism, weight cycling, and unhealthy relationships with food.
- Dieting creates mistrust with your body. Diets are dictated by food rules. When we are making food choices based on rules, we are ignoring our bodies natural signals of hunger/fullness and cravings which causes us to believe we can’t trust our body and in turn teaches our body that we can’t be trusted to listen to what it;s telling us.
- Dieting can lead to disordered behaviors and eating disorders. 25% of pathological dieters develop eating disorders, and even more engage in disordered behaviors. Eating disorders have serious consequences and can be deadly.
- Ditching diets can help you begin to reconnect with your body. When you stop dieting, you have the chance to start working toward peace with food and your body. Without food rules, you can begin to get in touch with your body and eat in a way that supports you as an individual and meets all of your health needs.
In this era it’s important to watch out for dieting in disguise. Often diets are dressed up as “lifestyle changes”. Some red flags to look out for include:
- any recommendations that require cutting out entire food groups.
- promises of quick results/weight loss.
- recommendations for disordered behaviors including counting calories, macros, or adhering to the same exact number of nutrients daily.
To pursue intuitive eating, we have to leave behind food rules and work towards listening to our bodies.
Here at iLiveWell Nutrition and Therapy we help clients heal their relationship with food and stop the cycle of dieting for good. Want to improve your relationship with food? Call us today!
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By Zoe Halbert
About Zoe Halbert– Zoe is a registered dietitian, licensed in Austin Texas who is passionate about helping people create healthy relationships with food and body. She focuses on intuitive eating with a non-diet and practices from the health at every size (HAES) approach when working with clients.
