Let’s start by defining what a diet is, shall we?
A diet is ANY form of eating that requires you to control your nutrition by tracking, restricting, cutting out, limiting, or eliminating foods. Diets often disguise themselves as cleanses, lifestyle habits, or detoxes. They all have explicit or hidden rules, and always come with extraordinary claims and big promises.
Plus, they will always make you feel horrible about yourself. They legit shame you into joining… like what?
Diets have no respect for you.
They don’t care about what foods you like and dislike. They don’t care about how you feel, or how your body reacts. They care about calories, and some made-up discipline about “self-control” and time of meals. I wish they had as little as one piece of evidence to back their overconfidence.
Food is so much more than just a number of calories or a measurement. The last thing you want is someone, or yourself, judging your progress based on a meaningless number.
I’m sure you’ve heard (or been the one saying) that a specific diet “worked sooo well……while they were on it” Hmm but did it, though?
A few questions come up:
1. Why did the results disappear after having followed it?
We all agree here – even those sold on the efficacy of certain diets – that the results are rarely (not to say 98% of the time) maintainable. You sacrifice, spend money, hate what you eat, sweat your guts out, calculate everything, destroy your relationship with food, and shame yourself into discipline for a tease. In fact, science shows that 98% of people who go on diets gain all the weight back & more AND go back to old patterns.
2. Why are they not on it anymore?
Other than what I mentioned above? Because hell, that’s why. It’s not a lack of will-power or discipline, it’s sacrifices and compromises that rob you from priceless moments you’ll never get back. It’s no social outings or gatherings, it’s a food budget that is out of proportion, it’s feeling hungry all day long, it’s drowning in water when you’re hungry, it’s looking at your smartwatch instead of the trees when you’re walking outside.
Diets are not viable.
If those diets DID work, why would they change year after year, and why would there be this many options? Wouldn’t I be telling you all about it?
Diets don’t improve your health, body image, self-love, habits or eating patterns. They set you up for failure so you can try another one, and another one… You get the point.
Leave the manuals, rules, and instructions to Monopoly games and go enjoy that fancy latte with a side of cookie, not guilt.
xx, Nadine
