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Diets that work for weight loss! If you want to know what’s the best diet for losing weight, you’ve come to the right place.
Diet culture has convinced people that the way to lose weight is to deprive, restrict, eat as little as possible and be as miserable as possible. But misery, deprivation and extreme restriction while it may result in losing weight, it’s temporary at best. If the result of a diet is temporary weight loss, then those are not diets that work.
When you’ve are overweight, struggling with your self-image and feeling poorly about yourself, you fall victim to extreme methods to lose weight as fast as possible. But fast weight loss, never leads to permanent weight loss. Instead, it leads to a life-long struggle of battling food, your weight and feeling like a failure with no self-control.
I consistently see weight loss clients in my nutrition practice who have struggled with losing and regaining weight their entire life.
Their weight loss efforts were always extreme – extreme calorie restriction, extreme exercise, extreme eating plans and cutting out certain foods. This keeps you in the perpetual diet cycle. Losing and regaining weight over and over again.
The goal with losing weight is not only to lose weight, but keep the weight off forever.
The best diet for losing weight and keeping it off forever is a diet that is sustainable for you that adds simple, health promoting habits to your life.
Listen to this Dish On Ditching Diets podcast episode where I explain dieting in a healthy way versus dieting in a disordered way, and how extreme deprivation always leads to overeating and regaining weight. Plus, what diet works best for losing weight and keeping it off long-term!
In this Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episode, You Will Hear:
- Are You Dieting in a Healthy Way or Disordered Way?
- Examples of Dieting in an Unhealthy Way
- Diets That Work for Sustaining Weight Loss
- Why 95% of People Regain Weight After Dieting
- How Deprivation Leads to Overeating
- The Real Cause of Your Carb & Sugar Cravings
- Why You Can’t Take Your Extreme Deprivation Mindset into a Calorie Deficit & Get Sustainable Results
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
Diets That Work – Why Deprivation To Lose Weight Never Works Podcast Transcript
Hello Friends! Today I want to talk to you about extreme deprivation when dieting and why it never works for keeping weight off long term. Extreme deprivation always results in weight loss, but it never results in permanent weight loss.
95% of people who lose weight, keep it off for less than 5 years. That is a real statistic, and I talk about that in my free weight loss class. If you have not taken my weight loss class, the link is in the show notes for you.
I am one of the 5% of people who have lost weight and kept it off for 16 years now. I am one of the few. I know those of you listening are eager to lose weight and have the body of your dreams, but my question for you is this.
Is your goal to lose weight and regain weight in less than 5 years? Or is your goal to lose weight and keep it off forever? If you want to lose weight and keep it off forever, then your approach to dieting and doing calorie deficits must change, your mindset about how you diet must change and your mindset around results being slower must change.
What I always did prior to losing weight, is severely deprive myself. I just thought that was normal. That was how you were supposed to lose weight, but it’s not normal.
Once when I was a teenager, I tried only eating carrots and cantaloupe. I was nannying for a family one summer and the mom was doing Jenny Craig. She only ate cantaloupe for breakfast and lunch and then ate one of those Jenny Craig meals for dinner.
In my mind, I thought if I could have enough willpower to eat as little as possible – only eat carrots and cantaloupe like her, I could lose weight and go back to eating like normal. I lasted about a week on that diet before giving up.
Around that time my mother had done the carrot diet. The only thing my mother ate for three months was carrots. Her skin turned orange, and she lost weight, but after she stopped the diet, she gained all her weight back.
What’s wrong with this? It’s all disordered eating. It’s not a healthy way to diet. It’s not a healthy way to get into a calorie deficit. But these are the type of things diet culture has normalized for women in our society.
We do not blink an eye if someone tells us they’re only eating carrots and cantaloupe to lose weight. We think this is normal. It is not normal. It is highly disordered. The scary part is us women we do not realize how crazy and disordered it is.
This past week a woman on my TikTok account commented that she was eating chia seeds for breakfast, carrots for lunch and a balanced meal for dinner and it was working great for her to lose weight. I responded and told her that’s disordered, and you will regain the weight after you stop doing this.
She went on to explain her gynecologist told her to do this diet and I explained to her that her gynecologist is outside her scope of practice and should be referring her to a nutrition expert and that her gynecologist is setting her up to regain the weight and binge later in the future. This woman kept doubling down that this is working, she’s losing weight, what’s the problem.
The problem is no one can sustain until they’re 85+ years old only eating chia seeds for breakfast and carrots for lunch. She is at high risk for nutrient deficiencies, osteoporosis, muscle loss, anemia, B12 deficiency as well as disordered eating.
Eating carrots for lunch is not a healthy way to lose weight. What unfortunately, will happen later for this individual is she will become so hungry, and the food noise will get so loud that she will begin periodically overeating.
Then she will feel guilty for overeating then she will restrict more in response to the overeating. Eventually, she will gain the weight back. It won’t be overnight. But gradually in that two to 5-year timeframe, she will regain all her weight back. It makes me so sad that women think this is a normal way of losing weight.
Just this was week I was coaching one of my lovely clients and she asked me a good question. Can I do a 3-day fast along with my calorie deficit? Before this client started working with me, she had been doing 3-day fasts and she liked doing it because the scale would go down quickly, and her clothes would feel looser.
She would get a dopamine hit from that. But once the 3-day fast ended and she ate like normal, the scale would go back up and her clothes would feel tight again. Crazy thing is her body composition never changed from doing this. She never lost weight for good. Her pant size never went down, which led her to working with me.
When she asked me if she could do a 3-day fast along with her calorie deficit to make her weight loss go faster, I said so what you are really asking me is if you can starve yourself for 3 days to lose weight.
I asked her do you think starving yourself for 3 days sounds like a healthy way to lose weight? Do you think starving yourself for 3 days sounds like a good way to get fitter and stronger? She was like well, no! Not when you say it like that. Exactly!
We have all been so conditioned to think this is normal. This is not normal. Starving yourself is not normal. It is extreme deprivation. If your vet told you that your dog needed to lose weight, would you put your dog on a 3-day fast?
No, that sounds ridiculous. So why would you think as a grown adult that makes sense for you?
When you do a 3-day fast like that, your calories the week after will be higher whether you realize it or not because you are hungrier. So, you will just stay stuck at maintenance. Nothing will change with your body.
Most people start eating a little more than normal like 300 to 500 calories extra every day in response to the 3-day fast so it doesn’t seem like you’re eating more, but you are eating more and it’s usually not an all-out binge so you don’t realize it and you’re just staying stuck at maintenance.
My friend Jessy who’s an RD who was on this podcast a few episodes back talking about dieting in a disordered way with me, did a video on her Instagram this week of a woman who was packing her lunch which was only a rice cake, and the woman couldn’t understand why so many people in the comments were telling her this is disordered. Jessy did some commentary on the rice cake video saying this is a common pattern people fall into.
Eating very little at breakfast and lunch to save up their calories for later in the day. They’re scared of eating more and not having enough food later in the day. They fear getting hungrier later in the day, running out of calories and going over their calories to satisfy their hunger. That is disordered. My client Judy spoke about how she would save up calories for later in the day only to overeat from doing Weight Watchers.
Worst part for this woman is she will develop what’s called a food aversion to eating rice cakes in the future. Same with the woman eating carrots for lunch and chia seeds for breakfast. At some point, you won’t be able to eat those foods because you are dieting in such an unhealthy way.
But because of diet culture and all the crappy diets we have been exposed to including what we have seen our mothers doing, we all in our heads think this is normal. No one ever questions these insane things we are doing to lose weight.
When I was in my late 20’s, I did this exact thing. Breakfast was coffee and an 80-calorie yogurt and lunch was romaine lettuce with an apple, a few walnuts and balsamic dressing because I was trying to be good. I thought that was healthy.
But then after work, I would come home and raid the pantry eat a bag of chips, order a pizza and eat the entire pizza. I was starving my body by eating so little early in the day and that at night it was a binge fest.
When I work with clients, I see consistently see this pattern. Not usually to the extreme of what I was doing in my 20’s but it’s the same pattern. Eating very little or nothing at breakfast, a tiny lunch and then a ton of calories later in the day.
The common complaint these clients tell me when they start working with me is they have carb and sugar cravings. I’m so out of control Megan! I get home from work and can’t stop eating. There must be something wrong with me. I have no control around carbs and sugar.
No, the problem isn’t the carb and sugar cravings. The problem is you are starving your body earlier in the day which is leading to increased hunger later in the day. You are directly causing your body to crave quick energy foods like sugar and carbs because you are not eating appropriately earlier in the day.
Because you are always thinking about dieting. Always thinking about making your body smaller. Always thinking about depriving yourself. Always thinking you need to eat as little as possible. All that thinking is the problem.
You’re still thinking like a dieter. You’re still think in extremes. You’re either extremely restricting foods you eat or you’re extremely off the wagon eating like a jerk. You don’t get long-term weight loss when you’re doing that.
A lot of women complain about food noise. This has become the latest buzz term, and my question always is do you really have food noise, or do you have food noise because you’re always dieting? Do you have food noise because you’re not feeding your body properly? Do you have food noise because you’re always in this extreme deprivation mindset?
Most individuals do not understand how to properly feed their body, they have an extreme deprivation mindset and they’re trying to lose weight with all that crap, which sets them up to be unsuccessful long-term, create an even worst relationship with food and having a poor self-image psychologically because they feel like a failure for having no willpower to starve themselves. Makes no sense.
Food noise is a symptom not a cause. I do believe some people have real food noise and my definition of food noise is someone who would leave their small children at home to go get food and overeat. Like you would be willing to put your kids at risk so you could eat.
There’s a big difference in food noise having a real impact on you living your day-to-day life and taking care of those you love vs. always thinking about food and feeling snack-y because you’re an extreme dieter and you’re always in these disordered patterns of starving your body because you don’t know how to eat properly because you’ve only ever been dieting.
And you’re always trying to lose weight and you have no idea you’re creating your own food noise and chaos with food because you’re always doing these weird things to starve yourself which our society has normalized because the only thing that matters is losing weight.
The thing is when you are extreme dieting you don’t think of this as disordered. Like the woman eating carrots for lunch I was talking about. She was like what do you mean this is disordered I’m losing weight?
See we are so obsessively focused on weight loss that we don’t even recognize when we are doing something dangerous to our health and to those around us just to look a certain way. It’s really scary and what is even scarier to me is social media. The videos of people showing off their disordered eating on social media every day and not even realizing it.
The woman Jessy shared with the rice cake video. That woman shared that video on Instagram and has no clue that the way she is dieting is disordered. In her mind, she thinks it is acceptable because she’s losing weight.
Crazy thing was she bragged in the comments how great her metabolism is because she’s losing weight so fast. But her metabolism isn’t fast at all! She’s starving herself! Eating a rice cake for lunch as if that’s a meal. I’m baffled by this!
There’s another woman I see regularly pop up on my Instagram feed. She has two million followers and just the other day she said she fell off the wagon of her carnivore diet and gained 20 pounds, so she was doing a sardine fast for 3 days.
She had thousands of her followers commenting saying they were going to do it with her. What? This is truly disordered eating on full display and other women are joining along like this is normal. It is truly scary seeing these videos everywhere on social media and women thinking this is what they should do to lose weight.
Any woman who wants to lose weight and keep it off forever, you must stop doing this. I guarantee you can eat like a normal person and lose weight. Your food should be satisfying and enjoyable as well as hitting important nutrients like protein and fiber.
The goal is eating as much as possible while making progress, not as little as possible. The problem is too many women try to eat as little as possible and swing wildly between rebounds, so they have no idea how much they can eat while losing body fat.
For instance, I have most of my weight loss clients do a nutrition audit. Occasionally, a client will binge before doing their audit. They eat like a jerk then try to eat perfectly for their nutrition audit which defeats the entire point of an audit and it’s because they are still thinking they must extremely deprive and restrict themselves to lose weight.
I have had a few clients, not many, but a few who have refused to listen to my advice and did this and then insisted on going into a calorie deficit despite me advising against it. They typically say I know you have your process, but I know this is what works for me.
They come into coaching and try to keep doing the same extreme diet stuff they’ve always done because they’re obsessed with losing weight and they will never keep it off. They will come out of the deficit and gradually over time they will regain the weight.
One because they don’t have a real understanding of what their true maintenance is and two, they still think in terms of extreme deprivation so they will come out of a calorie deficit rebounding into overeating followed by periods of under eating and slowly over time all the weight will come back.
All because they’re impatient with getting weight loss results. The point of coaching is not let’s see how good you can be with me breathing down your back only for you to regain weight at some point in the future. I know that is what some coaches do.
But that is absolutely not what I do. This is why I do not have a sign up on my website for anyone to work with me. I vet people to ensure they really are ready to change and be open to no longer approaching calorie deficits with this type of diet mentality.
Occasionally, someone slips through who still won’t listen. What they don’t realize is they are doing the same old diet tricks they’ve always done, and weight regain is in their future. It pains me to say that because that used to be me.
I never, ever, thought that how I was trying to lose weight was the issue. I just thought this was what you were supposed to do to lose weight, and I think that is what a lot of women think as well, and I have a lot of empathy for that.
Now we have the issue of many people on GLP-1’s and losing weight quickly because they are not eating. I am seeing this daily. Women confused why they need to eat. I’m not hungry so why should I eat?
We are going to have a lot of women in the next few years who are frail, break bones and have nutrient deficiencies because they’re taking weight loss medications and not eating. Many women are starving themselves on weight loss medications. That is not normal.
It is disordered and why you should be working with someone if you are on these medications because even though you are losing weight, you still need to be eating properly and hitting proper nutrients to stay healthy and have a healthy weight loss.
A woman reached out to me recently and said she did a program where she ate no carbs and no fruit. She lost 20 pounds and doesn’t know how to bring carbs back into her diet without gaining the 20 pounds back.
This is the perfect example of extreme restriction and then fearing keeping the weight off. This woman has all kinds of disordered thinking around food and fear of weight gain which is very unhealthy because of the extreme method she used to lose weight.
You can eat like a normal person and lose weight. If your dog had to lose weight, you would feed them a little less and walk them more. So, for you, that means you walk more, and you eat less of the foods you normally eat. I guarantee you make the same meals all the time.
How can you make them slightly healthier and eat a little less than normal? When I first started, I was eating out nightly because I was a consultant who traveled weekly so I just ate the same meals but cut them in half. It worked and then eventually I moved onto calorie tracking.
I never gave up anything and I have kept 80 pounds off for 16 years.
If you are not satisfied with a meal and you are just eating things because you think they’re right even though they don’t satisfy you, I guarantee you will overeat even if you are full.
One of the worst things you can do, is choose something at a restaurant that you think you should eat even though you really want something else. I just coached a client on this recently. She went out to eat and she really wanted pasta, but she told herself pasta was too many calories so instead, she ordered a salad.
Later she binged on chocolate and the reason she binged on chocolate was because she didn’t eat what she really wanted. I told her you can have the pasta. How could you reduce the calories? She didn’t know so I said why not tell the waiter to box up half the meal before bringing you your plate.
And she was like oh, I never thought of doing that. Exactly! We have all been programmed to not think like normal people around food so we do these stupid diet tricks around food and tell ourselves we can’t possibly eat what we want and lose weight.
That is not normal. It is disordered to think that way and it just leads to overeating because you feel deprived.
If you want to keep weight off forever, you can’t think in this extreme way anymore. You can’t try to be in a calorie deficit and drag all your extreme food deprivation into it. You’re eating in a calorie deficit, but you’re eating in a disordered way.
You’re not doing the calorie deficit in a healthy way. You’re not losing weight in a unhealthy way, and you are setting yourself up to binge in the future, have a worst relationship with food, fear food, fear the scale, hate your body and be on this yo-yo diet cycle for the rest of your life.
This is what coaching helps you with is get out of this extreme deprivation mentality. I’ve never had a client come to me who’s never heard of calorie deficits. Most women are experts in calorie counting.
What they are not an expert in, is spotting their extreme deprivation and restrictive patterns. They’re not an expert in knowing how to be in a calorie deficit in a healthy way.
The biggest thing you must realize is you can no longer expect fast results when you let go of extreme deprivation, lose weight in a healthy way and eating like a normal person.
This is the biggest mental hurdle I see for clients. I always reinforce to them that the extreme deprivation is the only way you get fast results, but there are many negative consequences to being extreme primarily, you will regain the weight in 5 years.
Nothing will change if you keep trying to lose weight this way.
You can’t Amazon prime real results that last forever so put your patience pants on, enjoy eating normal food, enjoy getting stronger and fitter while eating in a calorie deficit and if you don’t know how to do this in a practical, doable and sustainable way for you then get a coach to guide you one-on-one.
The link to set up a weight loss consultation with me is in the show notes. I’ll talk to you soon!
