Are you living in a diet prison? Are you living in a diet mentality? The majority of women I work with in my nutrition practice for weight loss coaching are living in self-imposed diet prisons.
Recently, I went down a rabbit hole in TikTok watching videos of women saying they were struggling with their keto diet or struggling with carnivore.
Barely hanging onto a diet, or way of eating, is a good sign that you will never be able to sustain any weight you lose until you are 85 years old.
And, if you cannot follow a dietary pattern until you are 85 years old then you will regain the weight because it was never a sustainable way of eating for you.
The sad thing is women are so desperate to lose weight that they will make themselves miserable eating sticks of butter, only eating on meal of day, only eating meat and eggs, doing a juice program, eating pre-made foods and God knows whatever else people are doing these days.
Women so desperate to lose weight doing whacky things with food all in the name of seeing the scale go down.
Women who are so desperate to feel better about themselves that they will literally try to do any crazy thing with food except the health basics I talk about all the time.
This is so sad and is not how an individual should go about getting healthier or losing body fat. Remember, scale loss and body fat loss are two different things!
This is what I call living in a diet prison.
If you think about this rationally, you would never put your pet on Optavia or have them eat sticks of butter if your vet said your pet needed to lose some weight.
If you're living in a diet prison, it's time to bust out and take your power back!
Learn in this Ditching Diets podcast episode why most women remain frustrated, stuck and never reach their weight loss goals and what to do about it.
If you're so desperate to lose weight, this is the first step you will take to get yourself out of diet prison and enjoy the freedom you so desperately want!
In this Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episode, You Will Hear:
- Why Most Women Are Incarcerated In A Diet Prison & Don't Realize It
- Diet Trends Like Keto & Carnivore - Are They Sustainable Until You're 85 Years Old
- Women Are So Desperate To Lose Weight That They Will Eat Sticks Of Butter
- What We Can Learn From The Time I Offered Free Coaching
- Why Most People Fail, Remain Stuck & Frustrated
- Why Your Actions Need To Match Your Words
- Why You Have To Be Your Own Hero
Never Miss An Episode! Subscribe to the Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast on Apple, Stitcher, Spotifyor Amazon Music
Related Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episodes
- The 5 Basics Of Weight Loss
- Scale Loss vs. Fat Loss
- Why You Regain The Weight
- Weight Loss Truths No One Wants To Hear
- Before You Lose Weight Checklist
- The Most Dangerous Diet (Optavia)
Are You Living In A Diet Prison Podcast Episode Transcript
Hello beautiful friends! How are we? We are going to talk about an important topic today. I would do anything to lose weight.
But before I forget, I want to remind you that each month of 2024 I’m giving away my low-calorie cookbook. You have to listen to the podcast to find out if you are a winner. The August winner is jojo51701.
She says “I am loving Megan’s podcasts! They are just what I need at this stage of my life. Megan teaches women how to get out of the vicious cycle of dieting and instead create a sustainable lifestyle to be enjoyed. I’m finding peace through Megan and am so grateful to have found this podcast. Have a listen, you’ll be so glad you did!”
Jojo please email me at megan@skinnyfitalicious.com to claim your free cookbook. If you are listening and you want a chance to win my cookbook during the month of September, enter a review in Apple podcasts and I will randomly pick a winner for this month and announce it in October.
Thank you so much for all your amazing reviews! I’m so glad the podcast is helping so many of you! Sometimes when you’re doing this work, you feel like you’re on an island and are like is anyone out there?
Is anyone hearing these messages? Reading your reviews is telling me this is helping some of you and that just fills me up with so much joy for you.
So, today I want to share a heartfelt perspective with you. You know I lost 80 pounds 15 years ago now. Wow, crazy to think it’s been that long! And I’ve now been working with women it will be 11 years this coming year.
So, I’ve been doing this work for a long time, and I see the same patterns in women’s behaviors. I hear the same frustrations. And the thing is I have been in your shoes and can relate to that misery.
It is probably one of my weaknesses that I want to help every woman I speak to. I want to shake them so badly and tell them how this is possible for you. You are not broken.
You are not less than just because you’re older, have certain health conditions and life demands. You can do this, and I think the saddest thing I see is so many women who just don’t believe in themselves.
They don’t believe they’re worthy, they don’t believe they make themselves a priority with their other life demands, they don’t believe they can have a good relationship with food, they don’t believe they can lose weight and keep it off for good. It’s sad. Really sad.
So, I’ve been down this path myself. I know where you are coming from and believe me, my journey was not easy, and I did not believe in myself either. I had to start doing things to grow my belief in myself and my ability to change. I had to begin to prove to myself that I would follow through and keep my commitments to myself.
Part of reaching a goal, isn’t getting to the finish line. It’s the grit and determination that you will do whatever it takes to help yourself and THAT right there is what builds confidence and belief.
It’s not some fairy dust that gets sprinkled on you. Believing in yourself happens from you taking action especially when you think that action won’t get you anywhere.
Now what’s difficult for me as a nutritionist who coaches women to lose body fat is to see how many women say, “I would do anything to lose weight” and see them do nothing to help themselves.
It is also difficult to hear so many women say I would do anything to lose weight and they’re doing dumb things to achieve weight loss. I recently went down a carnivore rabbit hole on TikTok and it made me so angry.
All these videos of women saying how they were eating sticks of butter, steaks and eggs and expressing how miserable they were. Saying I don’t know how much longer I can eat like this. I just want to eat like a normal person.
These women don’t see it, but they are incarcerated in a diet prison. Even the ones who think this is “working.”
You may be losing weight on a diet, but like I always say if you can’t eat that way until you’re 85 years old the weight will come back and then where will you be?
So many women say they want food freedom and diet freedom, but they’re enabling restriction and incarcerating themselves in diet prisons with these whacky ways of eating.
By the way, carnivore is going to go down as one of the most dangerous diets. Eating an extremely high level of saturated fat is a high risk. We know this from studies and cardiovascular disease is a silent killer and it can take decades for arteries to calcify and clog.
Even the doctor who wrote the book on carnivore stopped doing it because of negative health consequences he was having.
Then there’s this hyper-ketosis diet that’s going around too, which hyper-ketosis isn’t even a scientific thing. It’s made up by influencers. Basically, you’re eating one meal of 500 calories that’s high fat and high protein.
Not sustainable until you’re 85. Despite that, I’m seeing thousands of women commenting on those posts so desperate to find a solution to their weight.
Like women are so desperate for a solution to weight loss that they will eat 500 calories a day or make themselves miserable by restricting all the foods they enjoy, where eating sticks of butter is the only thing they get to look forward to, where they’re barely hanging on or starving themselves on Weight Watchers or buying packaged food from Optavia, Jenny Craig or Nutrisystem.
BUT women are not willing to do the most basic things to make this a sustainable way of life. Does this make sense?
I would do anything to lose weight, but I’m not willing to get my steps, strength train 2-3 times a week, do a little cardio, eating my protein, fiber, fruits and veggies, fuel my body well.
Rinse and repeat and be patient as I work on my body composition goals.
I would do anything to lose weight, but I’m not willing to do the most basic things that have been proven time and again to help me manage and improve my health.
Like you’re willing to eat sticks of butter as a snack, but you’re not willing to do these normal things?
Listen, I was once in your shoes. I always thought there must be an easier way. There must be something I’m missing. There must be a shortcut.
Let me just do this as a jumpstart and then once I lose some weight, I can go back to normal. Except my normal was what caused the weight problem in the first place.
Just like you, I kept doing these whacky things thinking there must be something wrong with me.
Once I finally realized that I had to be able to follow a way of eating until I was 85 years old, that was when I was finally able to break free from the noise and diet nonsense.
Once I broke free of that, I realized no one was coming. I was my only hope. I was willing to do whatever it took to lose weight. I was willing to figure it out. I got resourceful, I learned what a calorie deficit was, I learned how to cook, I learned what foods were proteins, I learned what foods filled me up, I experimented with recipes, I got creative with eating out, I learned to keep my commitments to myself.
If I said I was going to get steps, I figured out how to get them no matter what was happening in my life because no one was coming to save me. No one was going to show up at my front door and tell me Megan you need to do this.
It's the same for you. No one is coming. It is up to you to change your life. You can hire a coach or nutritionist like me or have accountability from others, but truly you are your only hope. No one is going to save you.
No one is going to make sure you eat your protein, eat your meals, get your steps, not be a jerk to yourself, get to bed on time. No one is coming to hold your hand.
No one is coming to slap the food out of your hand or tell you didn’t screw up last night when you ate all the ice cream in the house and you’re sitting around feeling bad about yourself.
You are your only hope. That means you get to be the hero of your story. The hardest part of my job as a nutritionist and coach is that I can’t make you desire this change. I can’t force you to change and do things.
You can be your own hero. You can swoop in and save the day. Save your life.
You are not helpless. You are not broken. But you have to take action and take radical responsibility for yourself.
You have to learn how to push yourself to do things even when you don’t believe they will matter. I can only go for a walk around the block tonight, that won’t matter. That’s what you think so then you don’t go.
Then you don’t go for 2 nights, 5 nights, 10 nights. The problem isn’t the distance, the problem is you’re not consistent.
Going every night just for a walk around the block (if that is where you are starting), is going to get you stronger if you are doing nothing right now.
You’re also more consistent. Versus, waiting for the right time to do it the right way you are not getting stronger.
I’ve seen some women say I just can’t bring myself to eat my protein with my breakfast, I can’t go for a walk around the block.
Like protein for breakfast could literally be a yogurt or a premixed protein shake. If you say these kinds of things, you’re acting helpless.
I’ve been doing this for almost 11 years now and some individuals have told me I just can’t bring myself to go for a walk around the block.
Like I know I should walk around the block every night, but I’m not doing it. Can you walk around your house to get more steps or your basement? Well, I get distracted. Can you get a $100 walking pad off Amazon. Yeah, but then I have to pull it out at night and my family will watch me.
Okay, can we go to the gym and walk on a treadmill? Well, that’s too boring. Okay, can you watch a Netflix video, listen to a podcast or your favorite music?
Well, I guess I could but that’s not exciting enough. At what point, are you going say to yourself I’m going to do the thing I don’t want to do?
Because remember no one is coming to save you. If you do not save yourself, you are going to find yourself on your deathbed with every struggle you’ve had your whole life. You have to learn to push yourself to do things even when you do not want to do them.
Like do you not brush your teeth and make all kinds of excuses about that? I bet you don’t because you don’t view teeth brushing as optional. That is the difference.
You view walking and eating your nutrients like protein as optional.
Until you start owning it and calling yourself out on your own BS excuses, nothing will change. But the amazing news is you can be the hero of your story.
You and only you can transform yourself. It’s up to you so are willing to do anything it takes to lose weight; you have to push yourself to do the things even when you don’t want to do.
It doesn’t make sense to me why thousands of women on TikTok are okay with eating sticks of butter, but walking around the block? It’s a no. Eating adequate protein?
It’s a no. Learning how to fuel your body well so you have energy, sleep better, have good digestion and can lose body fat while eating your favorite foods?
Like why are we willing to do the weird stuff, but nothing that makes sense?
If we are so desperate to lose weight and would do anything to lose weight what is stopping us from doing the boring basic stuff that works?
Let me tell you a story to give you context and highlight this more. When I was finishing up nutrition school, I offered free coaching to any woman who wanted it for 6 months. I sent an email out and said, respond to this email if you want free coaching and I’ll send you a form to fill out to see if you are a good fit.
I had 1000 women respond to the email and I sent all of them the form which only takes about 2 minutes to fill out.
Out of those 1000 women who responded yes, how many do you think filled out a form for FREE coaching?
Now, keep in mind if you are following me and listening to me, it means you have a desire to reach a goal.
Whether it’s lose body fat, more confidence, a better relationship with food, reverse a condition like prediabetes, more energy. Something. The single most effective path is through one-on-one coaching. That is documented by research.
Someone who has a goal, is more likely to reach it by having accountability. Now a lot of people will say I can’t afford it which in some cases is true and in some cases is not true.
I’m not here to judge, but what I can say is that that excuse was removed when I did this giveaway because you could win 6 months of free coaching. So that excuse went out of the window.
So out of the 1000 people, how many do you think in an effort to achieve what they say they want. I’m willing to do anything to lose weight. How many of those 1000 women do you think took 2 minutes to fill out a form?
I’ll tell you it was 200. Out of the 1000. So, if you are one of 800 who did not fill out the form. You failed the first test. Meaning do your actions and words align.
Step one, you failed. You have from now on forfeited the right to complain about your lack of results because you couldn’t take a few minutes to fill out a form to win free coaching. Your right to complain is over.
Then there was step two. Out of the 200 women who recognized that if I say I want something, I have to actually go do the things to make it happen. They passed step one. But then there was step two. Step two was a second form.
Again, only takes 2-minutes. I did that because sometimes there are people who see giveaway and never read the details and just toss their name in.
So, the second form is like are you paying attention. Do you really want this help? Are you truly interesting in coaching? Of the 200 people who passed step one, only 30 women passed step two.
So, the 170 people who did not fill out step two form, you have also forfeited the right to complain about your lack of progress. You have actively chosen to remain stuck and frustrated.
You have lost the right to complain about your lack of progress because you have also allowed your actions and your words to not align.
There is a disconnect. You say you want something, but your actions tell a very different story. And that is fine. I am not judging anyone.
However, what I am saying is do not waste your energy or anyone else’s energy by complaining. You have forfeited the right to complain about your lack of progress.
You can’t say nothing works for me. You can’t say I’m doing everything I can. You can’t say I’ve tried everything. Because you’re not.
The simplest step you haven’t done it, so you haven’t done everything. You haven’t done everything you can. You’ve lost the right to complain.
Now after step two, the next step was for those 30 women to read a document and schedule their call.
Out of the 30 women who passed step two, do you know how many did the next step for free coaching for 6 months? Only 4.
Only 4 women took advantage of free coaching.
Do you see the disconnect? It should be so abundantly clear why most people fail. Why most people remain stuck. Why most people remain frustrated.
Why most people say I’ve spent decades and years and I have not achieved my goals and I don’t look the way that I want and I don’t feel good and I’m sick and tired of it. EXCEPT you cannot say that anymore.
Because you are the creator of your own misery.
If you cannot fill out a form, then fill out another form and schedule a call… you are the creator of your own misery.
You can no longer complain about your lack of progress. You can no longer say I’ve tried everything.
You can no longer say nothing works for me. You have given up the right to complain because your actions are completely misaligned with what you say you want.
Now everything I do in my coaching is purposeful because I want to identify the women who are truly ready for change.
There is a psychological underpinning for this. I don’t do free coaching anymore, but I do provide free 30-minute consultations, and I see the same behavior repeatedly.
There is a 2-minute form to fill out when you book a consultation with me. I still to this day have women book a call and never fill out the form. It gets emailed and texted to them and they don’t fill it out. A 2-minute form.
I’m giving the tinniest amount of friction. Fill out a 2-minute form. That is the tinniest amount of friction. And some women can’t even make it that far.
That should paint a very vivid picture about why most people fail.
I even have some women who can’t even book a call. They send me messages and say I don’t want to waste your time and book a call if this is too expensive. What?
I am offering you a free 30-minute call with me where you get to tell me what you have been struggling with and I will give you free insight into what steps you need to take to reach your goals. FREE!
Yet, some women are like I don’t want to waste your time? You have failed if you can’t even book a call. If you send me a message saying this, I already know you are not ready for change.
You are not ready for results either. I’m sorry, you just aren’t.
The thing is it’s free to you. You have nothing to lose and what happened to having adult conversations. Just say, Megan this isn’t for me right now. That is totally reasonable to do.
If you say, I would do anything to lose weight but not take advantage of a free 30 minute call to get help then you are not ready to change because you aren’t willing to do anything it takes.
You aren’t willing to have an adult conversation and until you get over that mindset hurdle, nothing will change.
If you are not willing to fill out a form or have a free call with someone who has a proven record of helping women then you are not willing to do anything to lose weight and you forfeited your right to complain.
When you hear about people like me who’ve lost weight and kept it off for a really long time, it’s a very small percentage of people by the way… you would think that these people have to scale mountains or complete the most complicated, difficult tasks.
And the reality is, it’s easy. It’s literally do the smallest thing step by step and don’t blow yourself up by being a jerk to yourself.
If you really want to be successful, you’re going to have to do things that are uncomfortable even the smallest uncomfortable things and if you don’t do it, you will not reach your goals and if you don’t reach your goals, you cannot blame anyone else but yourself.
You cannot say you’ve tried everything.
You cannot say nothing works for you. You simply say “I’m not willing to do the most basic stuff to reach my goals.” That would be the most honest thing to say to yourself or anybody else. “I am not willing to the most basic things to reach my goals.”
Period. The end. I’m not going to complain or sulk. If you want, you can reflect and do some inner work to figure out why that is difficult for you.
Most likely it’s because you don’t believe in yourself.
The only way you will truly begin to believe in yourself is by taking action. You build confidence and belief in yourself by taking action and doing things.
It will not show up on your doorstep, you will not instantly get a spark of belief, you have to do things to get confidence and grow belief in yourself.
All the women you hear on this podcast who’ve gained freedom from food and dieting, are eating foods they enjoy, are no longer restricting and losing body fat, are feeling stronger, have more energy, are sleeping better, are at peace with their bodies… they simply followed these little baby steps and took action starting with the consultation.
They did the small tasks that seemed insignificant, but they kept following through and that got them to where they needed to be.
You know I love walking, and I’ve talked so much on this podcast about how I just started walking one day and that was what started me on my journey.
For some of my clients, I give them a tiny goal of just walking around the block. Because daily steps are proven scientifically to help with fat loss.
For two weeks, I just want you to walk around the block every day. That’s what I will advise some clients. Easy, right?
Not so much. Because it’s friction. It requires them to take action and the only thing that gets in the way of taking action is the thing between our ears.
I had a client once tell me she wasn’t walking around the block because she was worried about how she was ever going to get to 10,000 steps a day. This is an example of what I call stupid thinking.
Our thinking doesn’t make sense because logically you know doing something is better than nothing so if you are doing nothing because you are worried about how you will ever get to 10,000 steps a day that is just stupid thinking.
There is a disconnect with your thinking.
And this client would always tell me how desperate she was to lose weight, how she was willing to do anything to lose weight.
I explained to her, the reason you’re not losing weight is because you’re not willing to do something very basic to help yourself because the thing between your ears is talking you out of it.
Likely, because you don’t believe it will make a difference. You don’t believe it will matter and you don’t believe in yourself.
You think, ugh I probably won’t follow through. I’m too busy. I’ll never be able to do this long-term, this will take forever, so you don’t do anything. Except that line of thinking totally sucks, doesn’t even make sense and gets you nowhere.
Like think about this, if your kid was worried about how they would ever get to college level algebra when they are doing algebra one, would it make sense for you as a parent to be like yeah don’t bother doing algebra one? No! That’s so silly.
That thinking doesn’t make sense. In real life, we don’t do these things anywhere else except with nutrition and exercise.
And the real problem is we are not good at spotting where our own thinking does not make sense especially when combined with friction.
I cannot tell you how many times I have been on a coaching call with a client, and they’ve realized as they were explaining something to me that what they were thinking didn’t make sense.
Until you have to regurgitate something out loud to someone else, you may not even recognize that there is a disconnect in how you think. And it may be the exact thing keeping you stuck.
But if you truly are willing to do whatever it takes to release yourself from this weight and diet prison you’ve been living in, then you would help yourself. You would realize no one is coming to save you.
And until you start aligning your actions with what you say you want; you do not get to complain you are not where you want to be if you are not willing to help yourself and do the tiniest actions to help yourself.
Anybody who wants to do this, can do this. You just have to do the little things and if that tiny bit of friction stops you, you got to take a minute to stop and self-reflect.
Why does the smallest amount of friction stop you in your tracks?
If you are willing to do whatever it takes to lose weight, you can do this and I promise it’s easier than all the stupid diet stuff you’ve done.
It’s so much easier than felling miserable and eating sticks of butter or whatever crazy things we’re doing with foods these days.
Align your actions with what you say you want. Period.
Okay ladies, hope this discussion was helpful. I’ll chat with you soon!
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