Motivation & Mindset, Nutrition & Recipes
15 Reasons You Should Ditch Your Diet
Mar
Is your diet making you freakin’ miserable? Yes? You’re not alone. 45 million Americans go on a diet each year. We spend an estimated $33 billion dollars on weight loss products annually. And yet a full two thirds of the population is overweight or obese.
What should that tell us?
Something isn’t working.
Why Most Diets Don’t Work
I’m a nutrition coach. WHY am I telling you to ditch your diet?
Most of the time the diets we subject ourselves to just don’t freaking work. Most people who go on a diet find themselves right back where they started, or heavier, within 365 days of starting. That’s even if they initially lost weight.
Why?
Because consistency is the key to success and most diets aren’t build for long-term consistency.
There. I said it.
15 REASONS YOU SHOULD DITCH YOUR DIET
To be fair, not all diets are made equally. But if you can relate to any of the following reasons your diet feels less than, then it’s time to ditch your diet in favor of a different strategy.
It’s too restrictive.
When it comes to weight loss a caloric deficit makes sense. If you consume less energy than you need, your body has to pull that energy from its stores which in theory, results in weigh loss. But in this instance, where a little is good, more is not better.
A diet that is too restrictive for too long doesn’t give your body the nutrients it needs to survive. Your body, the incredibly complex machine that it is, responds by slowing down the processes you rely on to live. Aka, metabolism.
Restrictive diets slow down your metabolism. That is the complete opposite of what you want out of a diet!
As your metabolism slows down, your body needs fewer and fewer calories to maintain daily function. That leaves you in a constant battle to eat less food for fewer results.
The food isn’t appealing.
If you are not a fan of the food that your diet recommends you eat, how excited are you going to be to stick with it?
One of the biggest diet struggles is that it’s hard to give up the foods you love, and a lot of diets suggest that you should. The notion that you can never eat your favorite foods again is hard to swallow. Trade in pizza for chicken breast and steamed broccoli, forever? No thanks.
There’s a better way. A way to eat healthier and enjoy the foods you love. A way to make better decisions and support your goals without getting so bored that you give up.
You don’t have the energy to exercise.
Exercise is an important factor in weight loss and health in general. A lack of calories will leave you feeling like a pile of sweaty gym gear by the end (or even at the start), of your workout – unable to give it your all. And while every workout doesn’t need to be performed at max effort, you don’t want to be left wishing you had more to give.
This is where the “food as fuel” analogy plays well. Just like a car, your body needs fuel to make it go. You won’t get very far on an empty tank of gas. Not only does that defeat the purpose of exercise, it’s demotivating.
You’re cutting out entire food groups.
Unless a doctor tells you otherwise, cutting out entire food groups is not a good idea. In eliminating certain food groups you open yourself up to nutritional shortfalls and deficiencies. Cutting out food groups isn’t about eating healthier – it’s a gimmick to trick you into restricting calories.
You eat more packaged foods than you do real food.
Real food is whole, minimally processed food. It has real ingredients, an abundance of nutrients and no weird additives. It is what human beings have eaten exclusively for thousands of years. Until recently.
Processed foods are convenient, but they should make up the bulk of your diet. In fact they should play a very small role, if any, in diet plan.
Most processed foods are loaded with chemicals, preservatives, added sugars, sodium and trans fat to try to make them taste as good as real food does. Why eat something artificially attempting to be the real thing when you can simply eat the real thing?
Hangry is the new you.
Do you feel hungry all the damn time? Does your family walk on eggshells around you before dinner time? Does your significant other pack snacks “just in case”?
My friend no offense, but your current diet is leading your down a hangry rabbit hole. When your blood sugar gets to low because you are either not consuming enough calories or you are eating too infrequently, your body releases hormones (namely cortisol and adrenaline) in an attempt to regain some balance. Cortisol and adrenaline are your “fight or flight” hormones – meaning they can heighten awareness and can make you quick to react to any situation.
Hangry.
It’s an all or nothing approach.
If your diet ever leaves you feeling:
- guilty for eating something you “shouldn’t” have…
- like you need to exercise to make up for calories…
- as if you should your next meal because you ate too much…
- that you can’t get together with friends for a special occasion…
#quitit.
This kind of diet teaches you nothing and gives you even less. Healthy eating is not about restriction. It’s about learning to make the best choices for you and your goals in every situation. The best choice nutritionally and the best choice mentally.
Sometimes the best choice is a green smoothie. And sometimes the best choice is a glass of Champagne on New Years Eve.
The best choice is always moderation and balance.
It’s too strict to have a social life.
Undoubtedly, there are trade offs to every goal. If you want to lose weight, you have to give up something, somewhere. Habits. Time. Extra snacks. Mindless eating. Most of the time, what you give up to get fit, healthy and confident is entirely worth. A good trade off!
That being said, if you feel like you can’t have a social life because you’re diet is so tight, or that you can’t let go and enjoy yourself for a single night, that might not be a trade off you can live with long term.
You can’t remember the last time you enjoyed a meal.
I struggled with an eating disorder for a long time. I was terrified of dinner time. I hate eating in front of people. I hated trying to convince myself to take a bite, not to take a bite. It was a miserable experience.
If food has lost all pleasure for you…
If you can’t remember the last time you enjoyed food without feeling stressed out about calories…
It’s time to quit that diet. No amount of weight loss requires or deserves your unhappiness.
It doesn’t account for the whole wellness picture.
A good diet does not promise short-term weight loss with complete disregard for total health and long-term wellness. There is a definite allure to rapid weight loss advertisements. But losing weight too fast often requires unhealthy and often dangerous starvation techniques.
If your diet plan focuses solely on weight loss and not what could happen down the road, quit it. Things like diuretics, starvation diets, dehydration and salt manipulation can have serious, lasting side effects. Plus, there’s a 100% guarantee that results won’t last because no one can sustain that kind of diet for long.
You’re bored.
If your diet leaves you feeling bored and uninterested, what’s going to happen? What’s going to happen is you do what you do every time you’re bored: you do something completely off track just to mix it up.
Boring diets don’t keep your attention. They aren’t motivating. No one wants to eat boiled broccoli and chicken every single day. You start to crave the foods your diet says you shouldn’t have. They become all you can think about until you give in and *boom*, diet forgotten.
The good news is, healthy eating is anything but boring. You just have to learn to do it right!
Results? What results?
If you aren’t getting results from your diet and you’ve been following it consistently for a while now, it’s time to make a change. Even the best diet in the world needs to be adjusted as your body and goals change. Your body adapts incredibly well to what it has to work with day in and day out. It will adapt to your calorie intake, your macro intake, your eating schedule.
To continue to see results you need to shake things up. As you lose weight you will need to adjust your calories because there will be less to maintain. As you build muscle you will need to adjust your calories to maintain an anabolic state.
It’s a journey, not a set-in-stone plan.
All you can think about is food.
Your body is designed to let you know when it needs food. When there’s nothing left to work with, your body releases hormones that trigger your brain. The response? A grumbling stomach and constant thoughts about food.
While yes, a little hunger is okay and to be expected when you’re eating at a caloric deficit, 24/7 day dreams about hamburgers and ice cream sundaes is not cool.
You are miserable.
I’m not sure that this really requires an explanation but here we go. If you are miserable – like crabby, always hungry, unsatisfied with your meals, emotionally on edge, fatigued or in any other way completely and utterly miserable on your diet – ditch it! Why are you putting yourself through so much torture for a few pounds lost?! There are so many options out there! So many better ways!
You find yourself needing to let go on the weekends.
If you feel like you desperately need a day or two off every single week, your diet isn’t right for you. It’s either to restrictive, to boring, or not giving you the nutrients you need.
Want a better way? Moderation.
Find a way to fit small indulgences into your every day routine so that you don’t feel like you’re going to lose your craving-filled mind come Friday night. You’re body will appreciate the consistency and moderate weekend.
You have a “good food” and “bad food” list.
Food cannot be good or bad. Food is food. For some people, bread is beyond risky because they have Celiac disease. For others, we shouldn’t eat meat because we don’t have the right to kill animals. Still for others, alcohol is dangerous because of a family history of addiction.
Good and bad labels are a restriction technique. We use them when we don’t feel confident in our ability to make healthier choices. We try to categorize food so that it’s a simple “yes” or “no”. But it’s not that simple.
There is not inherent goodness or badness in food, only in the personal way our body handles that food and uses it or abuses it.
Bonus: you can’t stay consistent for any length of time.
At the end of the day, consistency is the key.
What’s the best diet for you? It’s the diet that you will commit to following consistently, long-term. It’s the one that gives you energy and focus, educates you why you are making the decisions you do, gives you the confidence to make healthy choices in every situation and the tools to do it sanely.
