Why I Don't Do Diets
Why I Don’t Do Diets
As a fitness professional, I often get asked what diet I am on. People want to know how many calories I consume in a day or how much protein I eat. The look on their faces when I tell them “I don’t do diets” is one of equal parts relief and annoyance. Relief because they don’t have to worry about me putting them on a restrictive food plan, and annoyance because they didn’t get the “quick fix” they were looking for. I in fact encourage them to not diet as well. But this hasn’t always been my train of thought. I struggled for years with an unhealthy relationship with food and dieting. There are three main things I have learned through my journey that I always explain to my clients as to why diets are a big NO-NO, and I wanted to share them here with you as well.
1.) Diets Don’t Work. Dieting is like putting a bandaid on a water hose leak. It’s a quick fix, but long term, it won’t work. They just aren’t sustainable. More times than not, diets often worsen a weight problem. According to Psychology Today, 95% of people who lose weight by dieting will regain it back. And just like bellbottoms, diet fads come and go. Probably the most popular craze at the moment is the no carb/low carb hype. Anyone who knows anything about how our bodies operate knows the importance of carbohydrates. Our body and brain literally need carbs to function. Do you move your body at all during the day? You need carbs to do that. Have to use problem-solving skills at work? Carbohydrates help you with that. Got a bajillion kids’ schedules to keep up with? Carbs help you function! So this whole low carb/no carb is a bunch of baloney. And that’s just one example of a diet fad that just doesn’t make sense. Diets don’t work.
2.) Diets Aren’t Good for My Emotional/Mental/Physical Health. That four letter D word did more damage to my health than it could have ever done good. The repercussions that come with dieting in itself is not worth losing the extra pound or two ( that will most likely come back anyways as soon as you go off the diet, as mentioned above). Keeping track of every calorie, point or macro and obsessing over what I ate consumed every part of my day. It created a restrictive and controlling relationship with food. Letting a number on the scale dictate how I felt about myself would send me into a spiral. The guilt I would feel if I “cheated” on my diet would make me feel like a failure. There wasn’t a single aspect of “dieting” that had a positive impact on my emotional, mental or physical health.
3.) I’m all About That #Balance. I love donuts. I also crave salads. And I look forward to moving my body every day, not because I have to, but because I get to. I know that “having balance” has become a buzz phrase over the last few years, but when it comes to what I eat, I really do strive for it. Our bodies are designed to tell us what it needs and wants. Over the years, whether it's through life experiences, social media or our culture, we lose the ability to listen to our body’s cues. When I finally decided to stop dieting, I began working on getting back in tune with my body and trusting it’s signals. An instrumental tool for me on this journey was a book called “Intuitive Eating” that has 10 principles, two of which are honoring your hunger and respecting your fullness. Game freaking changing. It allowed me to let go of my control over every single thing I ate and obsessing over a number and instead helped me to trust my body’s request for certain foods and learn what it felt like to be comfortably full. I am now able to enjoy my donut guilt free.
I used to begrudge when people would say “I bet you can eat whatever you want” because I used to think that I very much could NOT eat whatever I wanted. Unbeknownst to them, I was forbidding myself from eating certain foods and limiting my consumption. Food was 100% controlling me. At the time, it was not “easy” for me, at least emotionally and mentally. From the outside looking in, maybe yes, it appeared that because I was “in-shape” and worked out for a living it gave me a free pass. That’s definitely not how I felt though. But after a lot of self-reflection, therapy, researching and relearning what my body actually needs and wants, I now embrace the fact that I really can eat whatever I want! But not because I have some freakish fast metabolism or because I was “blessed with good genes,”, but because the truth is I really can eat whatever! And not just for me, for you too! I ditched the “diet mentality” and I am never looking back.
If you would like more information on Intuitive Eating, my food journey, or how I can help you on yours, please send me an email and we can chat more!
Hope to see you at the barre soon!
Cheers,
Heather McCreight