Blog - Skinny Fitalicious®

Here are seven bad diet symptoms! Many midlife women are working hard to lose weight, but don't have the results they want and are very frustrated.

Either they're on the wrong diet, and this is either why the plan is not working for them or why they may lose weight and regain weight after dieting later on, or they may be unaware of simple things they're doing to not get results (extra bites and tastes, too much oil in a pan, using measuring spoons vs. weighing food on a scale, not tracking average calories over time and steps as examples).

Whatever it is, it certainly is an emotional rollercoaster to feel as though your body is working against you, and as a nutritionist I do see many midlife weight loss clients who feel discouraged by lack of results.

The truth is much of their lack of results are due to bad diets, poor body composition (from dieting too much), an all or nothing nutrition mindset, a belief system rooted in self dislike and not addressing the inner mental game of weight loss before the outer game.

Restrictive diet plans cause overeating, self sabotage with nutrition, a perfectionist mentality around foods and eating clean.. Many midlife women have done these programs and as a result, they now identify mentally as someone who can never achieve healthy habits or sustainable weight loss.

They have strong negative self criticism and negative self-talk. While they would never treat a loved one that way, they do treat themselves like a bully. This is something a sustainable weight loss program must address for you.

As I always say, if you can't follow a way of eating until you're 85 years old then the weight will come back. So, if you can't see yourself eating a certain way for the next 10 years then you shouldn't be doing it for the next 10 days.

In this Dish On Ditching Diets podcast episode, I explain in detail the seven symptoms you're on an unhealthy diet and what things you need to look for and change in your journey!

In this Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episode, You Will Hear:

Seven Signs You're On A Bad Diet
Why You Need To Diet On The Inside Before The Outside
Why You're Really Not An All Or Nothing Person
The Scale Does Not Measure Fat Loss
Importance Of A Flexible Diet Plan
What Most Health Coaches, Dietitians and Nutritionists Don't Touch On For Weight Loss, But Is Necessary!

Never Miss An Episode! Subscribe to the Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify or Amazon Music

Related Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episodes

7 Signs You Are On A Bad Diet

Hello friends! Today we’re talking about signs you are on the wrong diet.

I have conversations with women every single day who are working so hard, they deserve the results they’re looking for and they’re doing all the things they know how to do and it’s not that they’re lazy or that they’re broken or that they’re metabolism isn’t working, it’s that they’re not on the right plan.

They’re in the land of eat less and move more and they are frustrated they are not where they want to be when all the pieces that make a plan doable, sustainable, and practical is not what they are practicing or following – the plan they’re on does not touch any of that.

So, I put together a list of the seven signs you are on the wrong plan, and this is why either your plan is not working, or you may lose weight but gain it all your weight back.

Before we get into that, I want to remind you to subscribe to the show on whatever platform you list to and if you have been enjoying the podcast please take a minute to leave a 5-star review.

That helps these platforms show my podcast to other women who need help. It is an easy way you can support me if you have been enjoying this podcast. So, if you could take a minute to help me out and leave a 5-star review on whatever platform you are listening on today, I would so greatly appreciate that.

Okay, let’s dive in!

Sign number one you're on a bad diet is your plan is not sustainable long-term. It is mind boggling to me how many midlife women are on plans that long-term they know they are not going to sustain. If you want results that last, you have to have a way or eating and habits you can do until you are 85+ years old. You do not get forever results with temporary approaches. If you are trying to lose weight cutting out all the foods you enjoy and never eating out, it will never be sustainable.

If you can’t this way for the next 10 years, you should be doing it for the next 10 days. An example is I had a client long time ago who was eating lunchmeat for breakfast to hit her protein goal and I said to her can you do that forever.

She was like no, and I said to her then you shouldn’t be doing that. We need to take the time up front to figure out meals we like eating that include the protein our bodies need. A lot of women do this because they are anxious for results.

You can’t build a house without a foundation. Many women I have talked to and worked with they’ve always tried to lose weight without any solid foundation with their eating habits and routines.

Believe me, I get it that when you feel uncomfortable and don’t like your body, you’re eager for results and so a lot of women will say they just want to jumpstart things, or they just need some results to keep going.

They will say things like I’m just the kind of person who if I don’t see results right away, I’m not in this long-term. I will lose interest because nothing happens fast enough. That is a mindset issue because you’re setting a limitation with an unrealistic expectation.

By the way, this is a good test for you to give yourself. How many times do you say I am a blank or I’m the kind of person that blank? I am the kind of person who always gains weight back. I am someone who needs to see the scale go down to keep going.

That means your identity is based in limitations. I want you to think about this. You are placing limitations on whether or not you take care of your health. That’s kind of wild. You will only take care of your health if you get fast results? Is that how you treat your kids? Grandkids? Friends? Do you only service your car if it runs well?

If you only take care of your health and do your health habits when the scale goes down, then you may not care about your health truly. A lot of women want to lose weight to get healthier, but that is backwards. You get healthier and weight loss is a byproduct of you taking care of your health.

This is why a lot of women on diets are a ticking time bomb waiting to go off because they’re not focused on becoming a healthier version of themselves.

They’re only focused on weight loss and getting the scale to go down, and then they’re shocked when they couldn’t stick with a diet that wasn’t realistic, or they’re shocked they didn’t maintain their results and it is because the plan was not doable, practical or sustainable because they needed to see progress to take care of themselves.

Whenever I hear women say I went on the keto diet or lost weight on a low carb diet, I lost weight but then I started eating carbs again and gained all my weight back. Or I was eating 800 calories a day but then as soon as I stopped, I lost all my results and gained all my weight back.

So, if you stop going to work would you be surprised that you quit getting paid? Would you be surprised if you quit cleaning your house, that it would get dirty? Would you be surprised if you quit prioritizing your relationship it would drift apart?

Of course not. It’s no different with your weight loss. If you want results that stick, then you need to have a way of eating that is sustainable and routines around healthy habits like exercise and walking that to take care of yourself until you are 85+ years old.

And how you eat should be something you enjoy. That makes you feel good. Not a way of eating you need to escape from. If you go on vacation and you can’t wait to escape your diet, that is a red flag you are on the wrong diet.

If you can’t wait to go back to “normal,” you are not on the right plan. Your plan isn’t sustainable, and your belief systems are a mess, and you likely have relationship with food issues if you look forward to going back to normal because your normal is the problem. Your normal is why you have a weight issue.

Your diet food and regular food shouldn’t be different. It’s just the portions that change. You can include donuts in your plan and lose weight. You can include cookies in your plan and lose weight. You can include chips in your plan and lose weight.

You can include pizza and hamburgers in your plan and lose weight. You can include ice cream and lose weight. What makes you think you can’t eat those foods and lose weight?

Now should those foods be the majority of your diet. No, most of your diet should be nutrient dense foods focusing on protein, fiber, fruits and veggies. But the fun stuff needs to be part of your plan too.

If you’re dieting and you’re super rigid and extreme, then you go back to your “normal” and you’re eating like a jerk with no regard to health or nutrition, it is no surprise why you’re struggling with weight your entire life.

You should be prioritizing whole foods and hitting specific nutrients like protein and fiber, but also including foods you enjoy that have fewer nutrients, so you don’t feel like you’re missing out on anything.

Likewise, this means when you are not dieting or trying to lose body fat, you should still be eating mostly whole foods, hitting your nutrient goals with protein and fiber and still including foods you enjoy. Your normal is the issue.

This is like a student wanting to get their grades up thinking they’re only going to study until they pass this grade and then they can go back to normal of zero studying. Their normal is the problem. The all or nothing is the problem. The lack of routine and processes for feeding your body nutrients is the problem.

Sign number two you are on a bad diet. You only are looking at the scale. Body composition is what matters, not the scale.

Midlife women who are only looking at the scale are dieting wrong. You are doing it wrong. You need to look at your measurements and body fat percentage. Your goal is to reduce your body fat percentage to get leaner.

I just had a client this week who went from a size 14 pants size to a size 10 (she could even fit into size 8 pants at this point she said), and she said to me I cannot believe my scale weight hasn’t moved at all.

The issue is women are under muscled. When you begin walking and eating adequate protein, you begin to put on muscle while simultaneously losing fat in a caloric deficit. So, you lose 10 pounds of fat and you gain 10 pounds of muscle. Let’s say you are at 180 pounds. Ten minus of fat loss is 180 minus 10 equals 170.

If you also gain 10 pounds of muscle 170 plus 10 equals 180. That means the scale stays the same. This is normal. That is much needed muscle women need. This is why the scale doesn’t mean a whole lot. Eventually your scale number will go down, but in the beginning of your journey if the only thing you measure to see if it’s working is the scale, you are not going to see that number go down.

Imagine if my client had only been going by the scale. She would have given up long before she got into this size 10 pants. She told me that too. She said now I see a big part of the problem was I was letting the scale dictate if things were working and then I’d just quit because I assumed it wasn’t working.

My client Karrie talked about how Weight Watchers diet failed her in episode 126. She went down in pant size during her first deficit, but her scale weight did not change because she put on muscle.

During her second calorie deficit the scale began to move for her. Her body fat percentage went down during her first deficit so even though the scale did not move, we knew things were working.

I hate to say this, but so many women are dieting wrong because they only look at the scale and they are spiraling mentally out of control over the number on the scale and putting way too much emphasis on this number.

You will never be able to control the number because a lot influences that number, not just body fat. If you want to lose weight, you need to focus on losing body fat. You can lose weight on the scale and still look fat. That is what we call skinny fat.

So, if your diet is only emphasizing the scale number and not taking measurements or body fat percentage into consideration you are on the wrong diet.

Number three sign you are on the wrong diet. Most diets, most coaches and programs (even some nutritionists) tell you just don’t eat this food or don’t eat these things. The problem with telling someone not to eat something is highly ineffective and will create more desire for someone to want to eat a certain food, and they will be more likely to overeat.

It is incredible to me how many midlife women I have seen who have a pattern of overeating certain foods – like ice cream, cookies, sugar, chocolate, etc. but they won’t eat fruit or potatoes or oatmeal because they have too much sugar. That makes no sense at all.

Remember what I said earlier, if you can’t eat a certain way until you are 85+ years old, then you shouldn’t be eating that way to diet. The biggest problem most women get caught up in is trying to restrict certain foods instead of balancing them in their diet.

They try to make their food as miserable as possible, and they keep trying to approach dieting through restriction. Restriction breads overeating.

If you find yourself triggered around certain foods and you can’t stop eating them once you start, or you have a food list that is off limits while you are dieting, then you are on the wrong diet.

It is only a matter of time before you will no longer be able to adhere to that diet. The pattern of restricting needs to be addressed. Restricting harder doesn’t fix this and can make your relationship with food worse psychologically.

Number four symptom you are on the wrong diet is that your plan doesn’t address your relationship with food, self judgement, inner critic and all or nothing mindset. I see this all the time.

A woman will talk to me and tell me she worked with a nutritionist in the past and that person just told them how many calories to eat, but they never worked with them on their relationship with food or their all or nothing mindset. Outer work without the inner work will never result in a sustainable, doable and practical plan.

You can have all the fat loss, nutrition, exercise and recipes in the world, but until you do the deeper work to uncover the inner work you will never have lasting success until you are 85+ years old.

The problem is may people follow influencers who have never had these deeper issues going on. Big booty Judy selling her work out guide or healing hormone Helen who is selling you a bunch of supplements or ripped ab Tony is selling a meal plan and telling you what foods to avoid, yeah, they can just eat less and move more because they haven’t been dieting since they were the age twelve.

They didn’t have a parent taking away foods and shaming them for being overweight, they didn’t learn to use food to cope with their emotions, they didn’t do Weight Watchers twenty times and get traumatized by the number on the scale, they didn’t do 30 diets where they trashed their metabolisms.

They aren’t scared of eating bananas, potatoes and oatmeal because of the sugar. They don’t feel triggered around sugar, chocolate or cookies and overeat them when they get around them. They don’t have these deeper issues going on.

If you live in the land of only tracking calories and exercising hard and you give no regard to your mental or emotional side of you, things that traumatized you in your childhood, your relationship with food, your relationship with your body, your thought processes, your belief systems, your inner critic.

If you don’t address these parts of you, it is no wonder they manifest with food every time you attempt to eat better and lose some weight.

I say this to many of my clients. It’s not about the food. Food is a symptom of all these deeper issues. Women jump around doing all these diets thinking the diet is going to fix them or they research diets and nutrition and think if they just knew this one nutrition or diet trick, that would be the answer.

They think they can calorie count harder. When the answer is in none of that. Food is a symptom of all the deeper stuff you are avoiding, and it manifests in your relationship with food.

If you go on vacation and feel guilty about what you eat when you get home, that’s a relationship with food problem. If you eat something less nutritious and feel like you cheated, that’s a relationship with food problem. If you feel like you overindulged last night on ice cream with your family and you feel ashamed of doing that, that is a relationship with food problem.

If you have these issues and your diet does not address your relationship with food, then dieting harder or calorie counting more or going back to starving on Weight Watchers will not fix this. In fact, it will make it harder. Weight loss becomes almost impossible because you can’t get the outside results without doing the inner work first. It is part of your foundation of your house.

Number five sign your diet is unhealthy is your plan doesn’t touch your emotional side. Most women think their results are just about the food and exercise and calories. Eat less, move more which yes can work temporarily, but is your goal temporary results or sustainable results?

If you are looking for sustainable, practical and doable so you can keep weight off and take care of your body until you are 85 years old then your emotional side is part of this journey.

On the surface, calorie deficit is how you lose body fat. Eat less, move more. But if you want to keep it up forever, I see it as more complex than that. I see it like a pie. One quarter is movement, one quarter is nutrition, one quarter is your mental side, and the other quarter is your emotional side.

Because if you are just working out and eating, but the problem is what controls you doing those things? Well, it’s your thoughts and feelings. Your mindset, your beliefs and then the emotional part of you which is how you feel.

I cannot tell you how many times I have seen clients sabotage because of their feelings. They feel down about something, they feel anxious about something, they feel stressed or angry about something.

I’ve been on edge these last few weeks scared I might lose my job Megan, I didn’t go for walks, I didn’t eat any protein or fiber, plan my meals or track my food. I ate donuts for breakfast the last two weeks because my kitchen flooded. I mean I see these things with clients. These are just two examples of many.

And it is because women have not learned how to regulate their emotions. They have spent a lifetime suppressing how they feel and not attending to their emotional wellbeing which leads to sabotaging your physical wellbeing. That is not a meal plan problem or a calorie problem.

Most diets or nutritionists don’t touch the emotional side. How do you handle your emotions separately from food or separate from distractions? Most women’s plans are entirely based on distractions. If you emotional eat, it’s because you are distracting with food and you’re using food to escape.

How often do you feel stress, anxiety, anger, boredom, frustration, pain, sickness, whatever you are feeling, and you go nope, I don’t want to feel like this, and you go hide it or distract with food?

If you distract your emotions with food, you end up overeating. So, addressing this behavioral pattern needs to be part of an effective program because this is not a willpower issue, a nutrition issue, or a calorie issue.

You can be in a calorie tracking app all you want, but ultimately this behavioral pattern will pop up and derail you from your goals. You need strategies for dealing with this and learning to process and regulate emotions because just having someone say oh, be more mindful is not going to be helpful.

That’s like telling someone who’s sad to just be happy. It doesn’t work. Learning to regulate your emotions vs. hiding, distracting and suppressing is key and honestly, I see this pattern so frequently with women I work with.

Life happens, it always does during the time I’m working with someone, and they stop taking care of themselves. Not because they didn’t know what the plan was or that their plan wasn’t doable. Their feelings got in the way.

It’s kind of odd when you really step back and think about this behavior pattern, like when you are feeling bad, why would you stop taking care of yourself?

Wouldn’t it make sense that taking care of yourself would be even more important when you are going through a tough time? I mean do you stop taking care of your kids when you’re feeling bad? Probably not.

But feelings are not logical. That’s why we do illogical things and then we get frustrated with ourselves. Learning to regulate emotions is key in your weight loss journey because it is a behavioral pattern that will sabotage you.

You will stop taking care of your health and use food to distract and then say, see here I go again. I don’t know why I keep doing this. So very important your diet addresses your emotions otherwise that sabotaging pattern will keep popping up.

Number six sign you are on the wrong diet is that it doesn’t address your mindset and how you treat yourself. The mental side is your belief systems, things that can be challenged around how you think and your identity.

Where people go wrong is they have an emotion come up and then they attach a belief to it, and they establish a meaning around it. Then your mind goes to work to find evidence to support what you believe.

For example, this is why someone will eat a cookie and then they feel guilty for eating the cookie. They assign a belief to it like I’m never going to be able to lose weight because I ate a cookie so I might as well quit and go eat whatever I want because I’m failing.

Then that person will look for evidence of other things they think they are doing wrong. I only walked three times last week. I didn’t track my food yesterday. They begin to look for all the things they aren’t doing perfectly as evidence of them failing.

You will convince yourself your broken or that this just isn’t in the cards for you. This is just who you are, and you can’t ever lose weight. You identify as someone who will never lose weight.

That is exactly the problem. You think this is just who you are. Too often we are trying to change our bodies without changing who we are. You have to become someone who’s healthier. Does someone who’s healthier freak out because they ate a cookie?

That’s like a kid who says I’m a horrible student and just expects to get good grades. No, you have to become a good student in order to get good grades. You have to become what you want. You don’t lose weight and become someone who’s healthier. That’s backwards.

You get healthier and practice healthy habits, mindsets and routines and add them to your life and then you lose weight, and then you keep it off because you became the person who is healthier. You became what you wanted!

If you struggle with overeating sugar and you say I’m a sugar addict and always find yourself back to overeating sugar, then it’s no wonder why you go back to eating sugar. You become who you identify with.

A diet is simply a way of eating. A diet, or how you eat, does not address the fact that you go back to overeating sugar. That’s why the emotional and mental pieces are crucial to you achieving lasting results.

Your mindset is literally how your mind is set. Where is your mind currently set at? Is the narrative in your head that this is just who I am, and I’ll always gain the weight back? How many times have you fallen off the plan and said to yourself, I knew that was going to happen?

That’s a mindset problem. It’s the story and narrative that you have crafted that you believe to your core.

One of the first things I do early in on with clients is go over their beliefs systems with them because I know this is a critical piece of this journey. But if your diet plan is not addressing the beliefs, the stories, the narratives that you have then it is no wonder that your results are short lived.

Like on a scale of one to ten, if your brain is on a level two and I give you level ten fat loss results, then your brain will sabotage you back to a level two.

Number seven symptom of a bad diet is that your plan isn’t flexible for bad days. This goes back to having a plan that is sustainable, and that plan should be adaptable for when life happens. This one also goes back to beliefs systems and regulating emotions.

You probably have an all or nothing pattern and belief system. If every time something happens in your life, a car breaks down, work gets stressful, or your kid gets sick, and you just throw yourself off plan then you are an all or nothing person and that is an issue.

Imagine if you treated your job this way and you were like oh, it’s the holidays. I’m stressed! Then you don’t go into work for the entire month of December.

Or you say I can’t take care of my kids because it’s too busy at work right now. I can’t prioritize feeding my kids, picking them up from school and if I can’t prioritize them some, I don’t want to prioritize them at all.

Or you’re like, I’m having a rough time right now so I’m not going to feed my dog.

The things that matter to you in your life, you always find a way to work around it and do the best you can. For some reason, we never treat nutrition that way.

If you are always waiting for life to calm down or life to stop happening for you to work on your health, then you will always be in a cycle of getting some results then backtracking.

Like do you buy a carton of eggs, and two eggs are broken when you get home, so you throw out all the eggs because two were broken? No! No one does that. But that is what people do with their nutrition.

I’m not sure why we treat nutrition this way. Aren’t some eggs better than no eggs? Likewise, aren’t some steps better than no steps? Isn’t some tracking better than no tracking?

Learning to live in the gray zone and doing the bare minimum and doing something instead of nothing is a skill that needs to be developed. Most women are living in all or nothing mindset. If you can’t give 110% to your nutrition and goals, you do nothing.

We prioritize what we value, and most people don't value these things and then they find ways to devalue them with I'm an all or nothing person so I might as well not even try.

You gotta eat to stay alive so why can't we make subtle tweaks in your nutrition so you can still make progress even if you can't get to the gym right now because work is double stress.

Like I was I was just working with a client recently who she literally came to work with me to fix her all or nothing mentality and and she said as soon as things aren't perfect, she throws out her entire plan.

So what happened was she hurt her back at her job and life got super busy so she couldn't do her workouts? She wanted to throw her nutrition away and I said wait a second of course that's the pattern but how much sense does that make logically?

Why don’t we instead say I'm not going to do my workouts because I have an injury, but I'm going to do my best I can with my nutrition to fuel my body? For her that felt uncomfortable because she has always been this all or nothing person who once she starts, she’s all in and if she can’t follow every piece of the program perfectly, she doesn't even want to try it all.

This is the pattern we have to re-write. This is why if your plan doesn't have adaptations for when life gets crazy, busy and unpredictable… you're on the wrong plan. You need to lean on the areas of your life like taking care of your kids where you are successful and learn how to borrow from those areas to apply over here.

Truly part of this process is learning to become someone who can pivot and be flexible and accept that life will happen. You can’t control everything. I’ve been doing this for 11 years and women have a hard time with pivoting and not doing everything perfectly and not feeling like a total loser unless they’re doing everything perfectly to a tee.

Your plan must be flexible. You must allow yourself flexibility. Think about it this way if you walk every day for 3 months and then stop for 3 months because something in your life happened are you consistent? No!

But what if you walked every day for 3 months and then when life happened instead of doing nothing you just walked for 10-minutes every day? You would be way more consistent because you maintained the habit of walking. You did something versus nothing. This is part of the all or nothing mindset shift you need to make!

Okay, ladies those were the seven signs you are on the wrong diet. I hope this episode was insightful for you. I will talk to you soon.