Do you have a diet mentality? Let's find out!
Many women over 35 are dieting mentally, but have zero physical results to show for it.
They are constantly thinking about food, thinking about what to eat and what not to eat. These women are focused on how much exercise to do or what type to do.
How many calories to eat. Restricting and binging. Obsessing over whether they are doing things the right way or best way and never getting consistent with one way.
This is a common scenario I see women over 35 weight loss clients in.
They are mentally dieting by obsessing over all these things and are frustrated because they are not making progress towards their goals.
The reason they are not physically getting the results is because they are not actually consistent and are not in a calorie deficit. Many of them are unaware that the calorie deficit drives weight loss.
Constantly pursuing the goal of weight loss is an exhausting pursuit mentally.
Dieting and being in fat loss phase is not something that should be frequently pursued. It is the exception, not the rule.
I do believe many of my weight loss clients prior to working with me have thought that sustainability or maintenance equals a constant state of deprivation and restriction.
That is not what sustainability means!
Enjoying a healthy, balanced lifestyle does not equal a constant state of hunger, restricting foods or depriving your body.
However, that is the interpretation many have and that interpretation makes losing weight feel unbearable and miserable.
In this episode, I break down the typical dieter's mindset and what to do about it to reach your weight loss and nutrition goals.
In this Dish on Ditching Diets Podcast Episode, You Will Hear:
- Difference Between Physically Dieting and Mentally Dieting
- Examples of Being in a Mental Diet
- Why Looking for the Missing Piece in Your Diet, the Right Way to Do Things or Best Way to Do Things is Keeping You Stuck
- Why You Need To Recharge Your Batteries
- Why Dieting Phases Should Be Short
- Reason Why You Are Not Seeing Physical Results
- Sustainability & Consistency Does Not Equal Perfection
Never Miss An Episode! Subscribe to the Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast on Apple, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify or Amazon Music.
Related Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episodes
- Doing Everything Right & Not Losing Weight
- How Weight Loss Works
- How To Start Losing Weight
- What To Eat To Lose Weight
Dieter's Mentality Podcast Transcript
Hello ladies! Today we’re talking about the diet mentality. Do you have a diet mentality? We’re gonna find out. I’m sure many of you are going to resonate with this topic today. It’s something I see all the time with clients and messages I receive from people.
And of course, I’d like to remind you that if you’ve been enjoying the podcast, I would greatly appreciate it if you took a minute to leave a 5-star rating and review on Apple podcast or whatever platform you’re listening to the podcast on.
Those reviews really help other women find the podcast who are struggling, and if you don’t have the ability to leave ratings just screenshot your favorite episode and share it on your social media with your friends!
I realize not all podcast platforms give you the ability to rate podcasts so sharing on your social media is another way to get the message out. I thank for you paying it forward!
Okay so, before we get into the meat of today’s podcast, I have a client story to share with you.
This was a client I worked with a few years ago and I very quickly began to see after we began working together her diet mentality.
During the week she would restrict her food so much, but then on the weekend it was a party. She would drink a ton of alcohol on the weekends, take edibles and stay up all night with her husband and friends.
The drinking and edibles led her to snacking and overeating calories. The staying up late led her to sleeping in on the weekends.
She was also hungover so then she would grab junk to eat to cure her hangover. So more calories.
By the time Monday came around, she felt terrible, she felt fat, and she was like I have to get this weight off. OMG I’m so uncomfortable I need to lose this fat!
So, then she would severely restrict what she was eating and do a ton of cardio during the week. She would fast, cut out carbs. Do all this super restrictive stuff. This was her perpetual weekly cycle.
I had to do a lot of mindset coaching with her like look, let’s stop doing extreme stuff. Let’s stop fasting. Stop cutting out carbs. Stop slashing your calories during the week. Stop overexercising. Stop thinking more is better.
And she would hear me, but then another weekend would come around where she was binging on alcohol and food and she would bully herself and the perpetual diet mentality continued of restricting during the week then going off the rails on the weekend.
I had to do a lot mindset coaching with this client because her mindset was the biggest problem. She understood logically what she was doing was not helping her, but she was continuing to follow this behavioral pattern and couldn’t see her way out of it.
She couldn’t see the bigger picture like I could.
I always say this is a process. Your mind is not going to change overnight. It’s not an overnight switch that you turn on and now your all or nothing mindset is fixed, and all your habits are perfect.
I think a lot of women think there’s a missing piece. A lot of women are in search of the missing thing, and they think if I can just find this thing, this missing solution then everything is going to be fixed.
And that was exactly what was going on with this client.
She kept thinking if she had a meal plan or someone to tell her what calories to follow that this would all be fixed.
But the problem with THAT mindset that there is some missing piece, is that there always will be a missing piece and it will distract you from doing the basics and being consistent with the basics.
I see this quite a bit. Someone will ask me something like how many servings a day of dairy should I get or how many servings of fruit they should eat. And I’m like does that matter?
I mean right now if you’re not moving your body, you’re clueless about your calories, have no idea how much protein you’re eating and you’re eating junk food knowing how many servings of dairy to eat each day isn’t where the focus should be right now.
I’ll ask them are they hitting their protein, fiber and calories and they look at me like I have 4 eyeballs. They have no clue what their calories are, what their protein or fiber should be.
Yet, they’re asking me about dairy and fruit. If your goal is to lose body fat and you’re asking me about dairy and fruit, then this is what I call majoring in the minors.
You’re focusing on the wrong things. You’re looking for a missing piece. The one thing that you think is the super top-secret thing to your success that everyone in the world is hiding from you.
Listen, no one is hiding anything from you, the basics work, and the real problem is you’re not consistent with the basics because you’re too preoccupied searching for the missing piece.
If you keep thinking there’s a missing piece, there always will be a missing piece.
Ah if I just know how many servings of dairy to each day, I’m sure I’ll finally figure this out! I’m picking on dairy as example, but I get this question related to other types of foods too and the point is valid no matter what food you’re asking this question of if you’re in this camp.
So, if I had to describe the typical story of a woman who works with me in my nutrition practice it usually begins from a young age. I’ve been on a diet since a young age.
My Mom was a dieter and had issues with food. I was overweight most of my life. I was doing WW when I was a teenager or started in my 20’s. I had times of chronically restricting food followed by times of overindulging.
I tracked my calories and only ate 1200 calories. I tried drinking shakes. I tried the carrot diet. I did Isagenix or Optavia. I would lose some weight, but I would always gain it back.
Or I would lose no weight because I felt so discouraged about my weight that I would do it for a little bit and then I would quit.
My doctor keeps telling me to eat less and cut my carbs because I need to lose weight. Now I can’t stop thinking about food, my body and my weight.
I hate putting on clothes. I hate seeing myself in pictures with my family and missing out on activities with them. I’m frustrated, I don’t understand why nothing works for me. I have a great life; this is the only area of my life.
I’m successful at my job but I can’t seem to figure this out. I’m so uncomfortable in my body which is why I need your help.
This is 80% of the clients I see. And just like the client I described earlier they’re always thinking about weight loss.
They’re always thinking about exercise and how much exercise to do. They’re always thinking about food and how much or how little to eat.
They’re always thinking about what foods to avoid. They’re always feeling guilty for eating a cookie or pizza. They’re always feeling guilty after they go on vacation or to a friend’s house or restaurant because of how and what they ate.
They’re always beating themselves up for their food choices. They’re always looking for rules. They’re always looking for someone to tell them the amount of food they should be eating.
Here’s the problem – these women are always thinking about weight loss. They’re always thinking about food. How much to eat. How little to eat.
What foods to avoid. What foods are bad. They’re always looking for diet rules. Mentally these women are dieting all the time. 24/7 – 365 days a year they are dieting. Always mentally dieting.
So back to my client. She overindulges on the weekend, but mentally she’s dieting. Because she’s always thinking about how guilty she feels about her food choices, feels uncomfortable and fat in her body and feels terrible about her choices.
Terrible about her body, terrible about her food choices then – she’s mentally dieting. But physically, she’s not dieting. Physically she’s gaining weight or staying the same because of this off and on cycle she’s in.
This is the problem I see a lot of women having. Mentally you’re dieting, but physically you’re not. You’re on a rollercoaster with food and at war with yourself.
I see a lot of women who are scared of eating certain foods, bullying themselves with negative self-talk for eating something they think they shouldn’t have eaten, feeling frustrated and mad at themselves.
It's because they went out for dinner or went out of town, and they didn’t like how they ate and now they feel fat and feel like they’re so out of control. They’re binging, overeating, and restricting.
I believe there is not enough people talking about the psychological implications of dieting. This is why I keep preaching you have to stop dieting all the freaking time. It takes a toll mentality. Any goal that you pursue is going to come with a mental tax.
You are trying to change habits. You are learning new things. You are trying to manipulate the size of your body. There is a mental load, a mental tax that comes with that.
This is why some women come to a consultation and tell me they went back to WW for the 100th time, and they couldn’t really do it.
Right, because you’re so mentally taxed from always dieting all the freaking time. Always thinking about food. Always searching for the missing piece. That is exhausting.
Let’s say you try to eat with the opposite hand. Maybe you’re right-handed and now you’re trying to eat with your left hand.
There is a mental load that comes with changing the hand you eat with. Any change comes that you pursue in life comes with this mental load.
For many of you, this mental load has been going on for years and decades EXCEPT the physical progress towards your goal is ZERO.
You have been draining yourself mentally pursuing weight loss for years and decades. But physically, you don’t have the results to show for it.
For the majority of my clients, they are gaining weight or they’re staying exactly the same. That sucks!
To have zero results to show for all this mental work you’ve been doing and I’m sure many of you listening right now the lightbulbs are going off in your head and you’re saying, yep, that’s me!
So mentally you are drained. You are taxed. But you’re so uncomfortable in your clothes and your inner bully keeps telling you how terrible you are with food.
You want more energy; you want to look and feel good when you see yourself in the mirror and you want to set a good example for your kids.
So, you join yet another new program even though mentally you are drained. You join a new program. Let’s say it’s WW.
Now you realize you are going to have to learn new things like how to count points instead of calories, you’re going to have track your food. You’re going to have to restrict some foods to meet your points.
All of that requires mental bandwidth which you have none left. You are approaching another diet with zero mental bandwidth.
Do you really think you’ll be successful with that? How long do you think you can hang on until you quit, give up, binge, overindulge and tell yourself this just isn’t in the cards for you?
It will be a very short period of time before you are back at square one.
This right here - what I’m explaining to you is exactly why I tell my clients in the beginning when they come work with me that we will not be focusing on weight loss right away. We have to alleviate this mental load.
There are a lot of programs that starting day 1, you’re weighing and measuring your food, you’re tracking your calories and already in a deficit.
On day one, you’re already beginning to do that stuff and to me, that is not a lifestyle program, that’s not mindset coaching. That is not real coaching.
It’s just another diet masked as a coaching or mindset program.
You have to recharge the batteries. You have to alleviate the mental load. You have to learn how to have a healthy relationship with food. You have to learn how to stop bullying yourself into losing body fat.
You have to learn to eat foods in balance and no longer be on and off with nutrition and your habits. You have to learn to what it feels like to get proper fuel in your body. You have to work on your mindset and change how you look at things.
If you always have the perception that you’re a bad person because you ate a little too much at restaurant when you went out and that thinking sends you off the rails into why bother land where you say screw it for the next several days and weeks, that perception must change.
How you look at the mess ups must change.
All this stuff I’m talking about with recharging your batteries is also referred to as maintenance. You know the thing that everyone sucks at?
Yes, most of my clients don’t realize this until I later point it out to them but I’m having them practice maintenance during this time.
We eliminate the need to lose weight right away and we focus on the foundational work first.
All that pre-work in my opinion must be done first. This pre-work helps you alleviate the mental tax from dieting 365 days a year with no physical progress to show for it.
The binge and restriction cycle is the perfect example of this diet mentality. You overeat or binge and the binge drive your calories way up.
So, you’re actually eating in a surplus because on average you are eating way more calories than your body needs because of the binge.
But immediately you go in your mind, I need to restrict because I had that overeat. I have to exercise harder. I need to make up for that binge.
It feels like dieting, only that you have zero physical results to show for it. It’s a diet mentality. It’s a diet mindset.
I’m sure you’re wondering well shoot how do I fix this. You’re not going to like what I have to say, but you have to let go. Let go of losing weight.
Let go of obsessing over food. Let go of beating yourself up. Stop trying to eat less and less food. Stop trying to out exercise your binges. Stop trying to burn more calories.
Let go of the need to lose weight right now.
I’m not saying let go of it forever, I’m saying right now let it go. Shift your focus away from weight loss and the scale for now and instead focus on fueling your body properly so you can have better energy and less hunger and cravings.
Improving your sleep, going on walks, lifting some weights and simply focusing on your health habits. Fuel your body so you can lift heavier weights and recover better. Get your body stronger so you can run around with your kids and grandkids.
Buy clothes that fit you where you are right now and stop stuffing yourself into your tight clothes like a hot potato. I know you think that’s helping you, but it’s not it’s making you feel terrible about yourself causing you to want to eat more food and do crazy restrictive things around food.
Like if your child had outgrown their clothes would you be like sorry kid, you’re too fat, you need to lose some weight suck it up and wear these tight clothes to school. No!
None of you would do that to your children. But you surely do it to yourself. Buy some new clothes that fit you now!
Now I’m saying let go of losing weight right now, but I’m not giving you a license to eat like a jerk. I’m saying stop focusing on dieting, restricting and losing weight and instead learn how to fuel your body properly first.
And I’m certainly not saying that you will never lose weight. Your weight loss goals are still going to be there in a few months.
If you’ve been struggling for years and decades with your weight and food, you can spare a few months of taking a break from focusing on weight loss to ensure your long-term success.
If you take a few months and really allow yourself to let go of the need to lose weight right now, the mental break will give you everything back.
Work on your basics, food quality, daily walking aka just moving more and sitting less, adequate protein and fiber, strength training a few times a week, throw in some cardio if you like it, sleep, stress management, water.
Get to work on the basics one-by-one. Your focus is on that, not on weight loss.
I have a client who started working with me last month and I had this same conversation with her that I’m telling you right now. We are not focusing on weight loss right now. We are building your foundation, working the basics and your mindset.
She’s working on her protein, her breakfast more importantly, her mindset. That’s it. Her mindset needs the most work, but it’s already getting better.
She is snacking less and gaining more control around food and not bullying herself as much.
That is progress. She is better than she was just a few weeks ago. Better means you are getting closer to your goal.
The tendency some of my clients have is they want to do more. What more should I be doing, what am I missing, what else can I add? This client asked me this the other day.
I want to add strength training she told me. You know what I told her?
Get your protein, nutrition, and your mindset down first. Work one thing at a time.
Stop looking for more to do. Stop looking for the missing piece. Remove the idea that you’re missing something. That somehow everyone else has the secret and they’re holding it hostage from you.
Everyone else somehow knows the secret and you don’t. Stop thinking you have to go out and find the secret because everyone is holding it hostage from you.
All that’s doing is preventing you from working your basics consistently.
If that’s you, you are not taking responsibility for your lifestyle choices and you are looking for external things to blame. I haven’t found the secret so that MUST be why I haven’t figured this out yet.
We have to remove the idea that there is some perfect plan or right way of doing things.
A lot of you have this idea in your mind that you have to find the right way that’s going to guarantee you results or find the right plan or the perfect plan that’s going to assure you that you’re on the right path.
So, then you sit back in your constant search while wrangling with your diet mentality and you stay stuck. And you’re staying stuck because you’re not taking action.
The only way you get to the YOU plan is by taking action. As you take action, you learn and adjust, learn and adjust along the way but if you never start doing things you will never learn and then you will sit back frustrated, you’re never getting results.
I see this with daily walking. I talk all the time about just moving your body everyday and everyone wants to turn it into a science project.
Well, how far should I walk Megan? How fast should I walk? Is morning or nighttime better for walking? How many exact steps should I take?
Does riding my bike around the neighborhood count? Does walking in my pool count? OMG, stop it! If this is you, stop this.
This is you looking for the perfect, right way that guarantees you definite results. There is no plan that guarantees results.
In fact, if you find one that does run the other way. Because any plan that guarantees results is guaranteed to do something stupid like Optavia to get you to lose weight as quickly as possible. Run!
Do you go to the doctor and your doctor guarantees you’re going to be healed if you take this certain pill? No, there’s always trial and error.
You try it, you see, the doctor adjusts the medication. This is no different with your lifestyle habits. You take action then you adjust based on what you learn as you go.
That is how you find YOUR magic sauce. It’s not out there in the universe being held top-secret and you have to go find it like a CIA agent.
If you are looking for the secret, you are not taking responsibility and are looking for external reasons to justify the situation you’re in.
Instead of saying something like it’s my hormones, say I’ve been dieting most of my life, I don’t know how to eat, I don’t eat enough protein and fiber, I’m unaware of my calories, I never move my body.
Simply put –my habits are inconsistent and sometimes I eat like a jerk. It’s not me, it’s that thing out there that’s to blame - that’s why I’m not where I need to be.
Remove the goal of weight loss for now. Work on your basics instead and when you wake up in the morning, skip the scale.
If you have an emotional reaction to the scale and you let the number on the scale dictate your mood and your eating behavior for the day and it triggers you to constantly think about your weight, then break up with it. Get rid of it!
I think the scale can be really helpful especially because people don’t understand the day-to-day fluctuations that the scale normally has, but again if we want to remove the the mental tax from mentally dieting all the time the scale is part of that equation.
That means for now we remove it and focus on basic healthy habits. You may feel naked without, but it’s not getting you the physical results. It’s just making you more emotional and scared so right now isn’t the time to use it.
Everyday think about how you can work on your basics. How can you fuel your body to have good, quality energy? Feel your best? Perform well in the gym?
Sleep well without worrying about food rules or how much weight I’m losing. You’re just taking care of yourself.
You want to know the real problem with nutrition and exercise? That you’re not consistent. It’s not that you’re not doing the right exercises.
It’s not that you’re not doing enough HIIT workouts. It’s not that you aren’t pushing yourself hard enough. It’s not that you aren’t aware of what food you’re eating.
It’s not that you don’t want to be healthier. It’s not that your hormones are out of whack. It’s not that your diet is too inflammatory. The real problem is that you are not consistent with the BASICS. The basic stuff you know you need to do.
Daily walking consistently, strength training consistently. You’re not tracking your calories consistently. You aren’t tracking your protein consistently. You aren’t tracking your fiber consistently. You are consistently inconsistent.
Stop trying to shortcut the process by focusing on stupid things that don’t make a big difference. Stop majoring in the minors.
Stop putting the cart before the horse. Consistently good enough is good enough and always 100% better than being inconsistently perfect.
Be consistent with the simple, boring things that work. Not for a day. Not for a week, not for a month. Not for a year. For years.
Patience and consistency is key and remaining consistent especially when you lack patience is the most important.
When I get up every morning, I have a big glass of water and then I have some lemon water after that, and I’ve been doing that for years.
The old me many years ago before I lost weight would always start her day with coffee.
Well, not really coffee I had a venti café mocha every day. That’s not really coffee, that’s sugar with some coffee. That was what I started my day with since my early 20’s.
Why do I start with water now? Because it energizes me, it makes me feel my best. Now I drink my water.
It’s always next to my bed and ready for me when I get up in the morning and then I have my coffee. It’s not a weight loss hack – that’s not why I do it.
I do it because it helps me feel energized. I’m less anxious. It makes me feel good. I have more energy. I shifted the focus to feeling better and having more energy.
Shift your focus away from weight loss and start with a quality habit that has nothing to do with weight loss. It has to do with you feeling your best, energized and moving you in the direction of being healthier.
Stick with the basics, practice the basics over and over again and stop obsessing over when you will get to lose some weight and how that’s going to work and how it’s going to happen and if you’re doing it right.
I tell you that right way mindset is a killer, and many women stay stuck in analysis paralysis because they’re constantly looking for the right way.
Stop looking around for that and stop getting distracted by all these social media people telling you things that keep you majoring in the minors.
Build your foundation, and when you do that and buy yourself some clothes that fit, mentally you are going to feel so much better. I see this happen with clients all the time.
Now you are certainly going to have moments when your brain is going to go back to how your clothes are fitting, the scale, dieting and how you should be restricting food more.
Your brain will bring up all these stinky thoughts and try to pull you back into what you were doing before.
That’s why it’s helpful to have a quality coach who can talk you off the ledge. If you don’t have a quality coach, you need to have the self-talk and mindset skills to pull yourself off the ledge.
You need to understand how to deal with those emotions because most people will react to them or push them down. And this is a big issue I see for quite a few of my clients not knowing how to handle emotions.
Couple that with menopause and perimenopause symptoms and now we’ve got emotions on full blast and if you don’t know how to deal with that or how to talk yourself off the ledge, then that’s where getting support is vital to your success.
I had a client just recently come to a phone call in a bad place. She had been doing WW basically her entire life so for her we are working on fueling her body without counting things and obsessing over numbers.
That is her goal right now. She was doing well, but then she came to this call and was saying how she had all these thoughts about how she needs stricter rules with food, and she needed me to tell her how exactly many calories to eat and exactly when she would lose weight.
She was uncomfortable and her food was not the problem.
I see in her food journal what she eats. Lots of high-quality foods and she is very aware of her portions from her WW days.
But as we were talking a lightbulb went off in her head and she realized her emotions about being stricter with food were because she saw a parent over the weekend who she doesn’t get along with and she was really angry about this parent.
She discovered that her anger was manifesting into this need to have strict food rules.
This is what I mean about menopausal and perimenopausal women being out of control with their emotions.
Emotions specifically, unmanaged emotions (we are unaware) can trigger this diet mentality and that is exactly what was going on for her.
It was about her parent not about how many calories she needed. This is where have a quality coach can help you with this or maybe a therapist.
Then once you have worked on being healthier and practicing your health promoting mindset and you are feeling better around food and how you’re fueling your body, that’s when you can work on a calorie deficit and getting yourself into a short fat loss phase.
You will know when that time is. You will feel a huge difference.
You will feel much better from not constantly thinking about dieting all the time, bullying yourself, obsessing about food and making yourself feel guilty. That won’t be there any longer.
That is the time to physically diet. That is when you can get yourself into a fat loss phase. A short, intentionally focused timeframe of going into a fat loss phase then getting out going back to maintenance.
There will be some restrictions and compromises during your fat loss phase, but it will be short and manageable and mentally doable because you will have the mental energy to do it.
It won’t be like what you experienced in the past where you were mentally dieting all the time - 365 days a year 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
It’s time to free yourself from that mental diet prison. Break the cycle. This will make it more sustainable for you!
I think a lot of you think sustainability means dieting all the time. Being in a constant state of deprivation. That is not what sustainability means.
Sustainability is everything outside of the calorie deficit. Your protein, your fiber, quality of food, your walking, your sleep, your strength training, your mindset that stuff happens whether or not you are in a fat loss phase.
You do that stuff whether or not you are trying to lose weight.
The only thing that changes in the fat loss phase is the quantity of food aka the calorie deficit. That IS the only thing that changes!
You are trying to manipulate your body to be a smaller size in a fat loss phase and that manipulation is not sustainable to be in that phase forever.
I believe many of you think sustainability means eating perfectly healthy all the time and being in a constant state of deprivation, calorie deficit and dieting. That is miserable.
That is why many women say they aren’t motivated. Yeah, because you still equate sustainabile to miserable. I also think a lot of women don’t know how to eat balanced meals and navigating including less nutritious foods in their diet.
They only know how to diet and restrict so now when someone like me talks about maintenance and fueling your body it’s like a foreign language.
You have no idea what that looks like and even when people try to explain to you how basic it is, your brain overcomplicates it because you’re so used to every diet you’ve ever done being hard. It must be hard to eat at maintenance, it must be hard to fuel my body.
That’s what you automatically correlate it to because that’s all you’ve ever known. You have the diet mentality, but not the physical results to show for it.
Dieting is the exception, not the rule. You’re in maintenance most of the time practicing your health basics then on the rare occurrence you have a planned fat loss phase.
I’m in one now and I’m only going to be in it for 10 weeks. That’s it. In and out.
Losing weight and calorie deficits should not be a constant state that you’re living in. Shift the focus from weight loss to building your basics – your foundation.
As I tell my clients, it’s simple, but not easy. None of us have been taught to build the basics.
I wish they taught people these basics in school, but they don’t. I don’t quite understand why we are learning certain things in school like trigonometry and poetry.
Those things that vast majority of people will never use in their lives, but it’s standard high school curriculum.
Where are the classes on how to get a mortgage and save money for a retirement account and oh yeah, how to eat so you can live a healthy life.
I mean eating is vital to life why is that not standard curriculum, but poetry and trigonometry is?
No, we’ve only been conditioned to follow these weird diets! Like women actually think it’s normal to lose weight by doing Optavia, Nutrisystem or eating 800 calories.
That is not normal! What are those things teaching you? Nothing!
Absolutely nothing except how to become obsessed with the scale, food and your body. That is not healthy and before you can push weight loss you first have to work on having a healthier relationship with food.
Someone who jumps into calorie counting who’s got a bad relationship with food needs to work on their relationship with food first. That’s why I say let it go.
Let go of the need to lose weight right now. I know that’s scary. I know you will want to resist it. Don’t resist. Do the boring basics and let go of the need for now to lose weight.
Then once you are ready and have mastered your basics, then work on a short fat loss phase.
When you change your approach, I promise it is so worth it because being in this dieter’s mindset is mentally taxing. It’s draining.
Mentally to be dieting all the time, but physically you’re gaining weight or you’re staying the same. It’s exhausting!
But as with anything in life, you always have a choice. You can take my advice, or you can keep doing what you’ve always done. That’s your choice.
You have that right as a human. But what do they say? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
Maybe, just maybe if you’re listening to this today you need a new way. I hope this episode was helpful and I’ll talk to you soon!
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