Diets Can Make You Fat
Eating the right foods is challenging at the best of times. Think of a diet, any diet. You start with good intentions. You lose a few pounds or even better 1 stone in weight. Stepping back onto the scales a month later, you are back to your old weight. Sound familiar? Even when exercising you yo-yo back and forward battling with yourself. Driving yourself nuts and beating yourself up because ‘You can’t stick to a regime.’
Hey, the majority of the people dieting are in the same boat.
Research has shown us—diets do not work…
Are You Driving Yourself Nuts by Denying Yourself?
Imagine this, your summer holiday is in one month, and you are trying to get back into your size 12 dress. Tracking down the latest diet, you are full of good intentions. But you’ve got a party you are going to on the weekend. And at the party will be all the food you love eating. Scanning your diet sheet, you find none of that food is on it. Believe me, it never is.
So, you’re at the party and you are doing well, but the whole time you are fighting with your brain to have less wine, less crisps, and less cake. There is a war going on in your head. The diet sheet says lettuce and carrots. But laid out on the table is tasty pizza and a fabulous chocolate gateau from the local French patisserie beckoning you with all of its seductive chocolate shavings.
Your brain is not saying;
‘I WANT THE LETTUCE.’ For some this may be the case, but I believe you are in the minority… the very envied minority.
No. Your brain is screaming ‘GIMME THE CAKE! NOW!’
Swallowing the cake (how many of us savour our food in moments like this), you lick your lips. As soon as you finish the cake…
You say, ‘I shouldn’t have eaten that, its gone straight to my hips.’ Or, ‘OMG I’ve just put on 3 pounds eating that piece of cake.’
You show someone your bloated belly…not the done thing really, no matter how many glasses of wine you have had.
Through dieting we feel we are denying ourselves. And internal war breaks out in our head every meal time and every time we see food. Our whole focus is— food. But food is not the problem.
Make Eating Habits a Choice rather than a Chore
Understanding why we over eat and continue eating food that is clogging our arteries, and making us lethargic is the answer.
Eating for many is emotional. How happy, sad or mad we are feeling is driving our emotions and our eating. We associate childhood memories, good and bad with food. Think of the impact of school dinners, At boarding school, I put cold custard in my pockets because my friend (who hated custard) was made to sit at the table with that yellowish coagulated blob until it was all gone.
Or my friend who was in a big family ate like there was no tomorrow. Food was scarce in her mind. Eating for her was a competition, with no holds barred. She had to eat as much as she could, as quick as she could because once it was gone, it was gone until the next feeding frenzy. She continued to eat like that until late in life. I’m not sure she had any idea what food tasted like.
Then, who was given food as treats? Maybe you got ice creams or lollies if you behaved. For one of my clients, sugary food put the sweetness back into her life.
What Do You Associate Food With?
Do you associate food with good times around the dinner table with your family? Food is often connected with love. When this is the case diets are doomed when the love goes wrong.
For others, it is connected with punishment. Because if you were denied food, dieting is very hard, because whatever is not on your diet list, you feel you are being denied again. And because now you’re an adult ‘YOU CAN HAVE WHATEVER YOU WANT, WHEN YOU WANT’ (HINT: Don’t stand in their way when they’re charging at the fridge) and then of course, that diet goes out the window along with the empty fridge and then the next diet… and you get more and more furious with yourself because… ‘WHERE IS MY STAYING POWER.’
Denying yourself is frustrating and will drive you nuts. Understanding why you eat the way you do liberates you from eating issues.
Blaming people for being overweight is unfair. If you have never been overweight you may think it is just about self-control. But it is not. Understanding the emotional reasons why we eat the way we do, provides you with the answer to your dieting and eating habits. Dieting alone is unlikely to solve the yo-yo effect.
If this rings true for you then lets chat.
