Life seems to throw us plenty of reasons to diet, maybe you’re in the run up to your wedding day or perhaps you’ve just booked a holiday and feel pressure to achieve the perfect ‘beach body’.
We are constantly bombarded with advertisements for weight loss products and sold an unrealistic body image through the media and movie industry.
The pressure to live up to these expectations often leads to women jumping from one fad diet to the next.
Healthline tells us that “Yo-yo dieting, also known as ‘weight cycling’, describes the pattern of losing weight, regaining it and then dieting again.”
It’s this vicious circle of dieting that plays havoc with our metabolism, our attitude to food, our self-esteem and mental wellbeing.
Here are 7 reason why you should ditch the diets for good:
1. It messes with your body
When we put ourselves on low calorie diets our body behaves as if it’s being starved, as a defence mechanism it becomes highly efficient at using the energy available to it.
Your body senses the sudden shortage of food and starts to protect any stores of fat it already has.
When this happens, you will derive energy from muscle and lean tissue instead, resulting in muscle loss and, therefore, a lower metabolism.
Now you are in a position where fewer calories are needed each day and this lowered metabolism, in turn, slows weight loss down.
2. It messes with your head
Because we are depriving our body of an adequate supply of food, we start to crave food constantly – then when we give in and eat some of the ‘forbidden’ food we end up feeling ashamed and guilty.
When we reinforce our negative feelings about ourselves, we can sometimes turn to food for comfort…and so the cycle continues…
3. It doesn’t get to the root of the problem
You may have experienced weight gain for several different reasons. You might have suffered an injury that affects your ability to exercise, you may be stress eating because of work pressures or you may have issues with food that started in childhood – in fact there are endless reasons why we ladies may carry some excess weight.
Dieting may initially help us to lose weight, but it doesn’t fix what’s going on inside our heads that caused us to gain weight in the first place. Addressing the issues in our lives, and making small steps towards what we really want, can do wonders for our health, both mentally and physically.
4. It gives you an unhealthy relationship with food
Constant dieting and food restriction teaches you to see some food as the enemy – as something that you shouldn’t have. This robs you of the life-affirming pleasure of eating delicious food and enjoying it when you do so.
Taking pleasure in eating and feeling gratitude for food is an important aspect of our relationship with food.
A much healthier approach to weight management is to make small changes and to gradually add healthy items into your diet instead of removing all your pleasures at once.
5. It teaches you to ignore what your body is trying to tell you
When your body is telling you that you are hungry you should listen to it and, if you are on a strict diet, you will need to do a lot of listening! Listening to the natural signals from your body doesn’t mean always grabbing the fast-food menu. You should not ignore the signals of fullness or hunger but instead use these signals as a way of learning what our body’s needs actually are.
We need to trust our bodies and what it’s telling us and that means listening to it and not trying to suppress and ignore what it’s trying to tell us.
6. It sets you up for repeated failure
Because your body’s metabolism has slowed down following a strict diet, when you eventually come off it and eat as you normally would you gain the weight back, if not more.
You are setting yourself up for failure after failure and this feeling never leaves us feeling good. Instead introduce more permanent healthy changes, one at a time.
Don’t overwhelm yourself, you’re far more likely to succeed if you approach things in a more sustainable and gentle way.
7. Life is just too short!
They say you only live once – but that’s wrong, we die once but we live every single day – and what’s the point of doing that hungry?
We all know how to eat healthily – it’s not rocket science – and remember, a little of what you fancy does you good!
