The inevitable truth about dieting

The truth is that all dieting is yo-yo dieting. 

If you restrict yourself for a certain number of weeks and loose weight it is obvious you won’t be able to keep up with the plan in the long haul because:

1. Your body needs more fuel to live and you can’t live in a caloric deficit
2. Your physical and emotional signals were get fired up (hungriness, moodiness, bad sleep, loss of period, mineral and vitamin deficiencies…)
3. Your workout performance will suffer and injuries will happen just to name a dew

The cycle usually begins once you regain all the weight back. It is inevitable, it will come back. Once you realize that you go back to the same diet, because you were so successful with it the first time around and obviously again you will loose weight. It is something that worked before so it will work again.

Instead of going through the vicious cycle of dieting I suggest you try something different:

1. Eat to be healthy, not to loose weight. If you eat healthy and ditch some of the processed foods/drinks, highly likely your weight will naturally go down
2. Separate yourself from this idea that you have to diet all the time, this is NOT what your life is supposed to be about
3. Give yourself the permission to experiment with food: how will you learn what your body is craving if you don’t try to feed it?
4. Understand your own eating patterns and when does dieting usually start for you? After a binge? Before vacation?
5. Try to define how do you feel when you eat certain foods: satiated, bloated, gassy, hungry? Diet cultures tell us what to eat even if it doesn’t sit well with us, it’s important that you know what feel best. It can even be a healthy food that just causes you discomfort. By trying it out you can know that not all foods sit well with all people, and that’s OK! 

The whole idea of dieting is that it never stops. If you restrict, you will gain and you will go back to restricting. I am more fore finding a sustainable way of eating for both your soul and your body. What does that mean for me? 

I eat pretty clean : vegetables, protein, healthy fats and I try to avoid foods that keep skyrocketing my blood sugar or that I have issues digesting like beans or grains. I treat myself almost everyday and my brain gets the information that there is enough food but also that I don’t deprive myself of the treats that I feel I want. The moment you allow yourself to have these treats (and by the way treating yourself here and there won’t change much in your body composition), you stop thinking about it all the time. It doesn’t have the appeal anymore like it used to. It becomes just food that you can have or not. Not good, no bad, just food like any other.