Why Diets Hurt Us
The diet industry is a $66 BILLION per year industry!!! The average American makes 3-4 diet attempts per year. 95% of dieters fail and eventually regain the weight and often gain even more weight in the end. These diets are hurting our physical and mental well-being.
DEFINITION of DIET: A diet is a way of eating that tells you WHEN to eat, WHAT to eat, and HOW MUCH to eat.
Years of dieting can cause so many harmful biological, psychological and emotional effects.
Essentially, even though it may sound extreme dieting is a form of starvation. I remember going on a handful of diets after my son was born to "lose the baby weight" and I was ALWAYS SO HUNGRY. I never felt satisfied or full because I was restricting my food intake and not listening to my body's internal signals.
The book Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program that Works 3rd Edition by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch talks about all the types of damage that can be done from dieting and it is quite the list.
So if you aren't going to diet what are you going to do? If you are unsure how to eat because you have been dieting for years I would highly recommend Intuitive Eating.
Intuitive Eating provides 10 principles to help you normalize your eating and TRUST your body's internal cues.
When I read Intuitive Eating for the first time I realized how much my disordered eating patterns, chronic dieting, and food restriction were actually a MENTAL PROBLEM. As a culture, we talk a lot about the physical aspects of dieting and what to do, but we completely forget about the mental aspect of it all.
The effects diets have on our minds and bodies are HUGE and yet we still agree to be a part of this madness. Today I want to talk about the damage of diets to our overall health and wellbeing. (Again this comes from the book Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch)
Emotional Damage From Diets
Diets make you feel stuck in a constant cycle of shame.
You feel bad in your body. You find a diet to try to change. You try the diet for a few days or weeks and eventually fail. You feel like you are the problem and YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH. You feel bad in your body and try again.
This cycle is so damaging to our physical and mental health. You are not the problem...diets are.
Diets take away your self-confidence.
When we diet we are telling ourselves every day that we are not good enough. Think about why you are dieting in the first place? Not dieting helps you move towards body acceptance and pursue health from a balanced and non-extreme point of view.
Diets dictate your food choices.
Diets are usually very clear on what to eat and what not to eat. I remember being on the Whole 30 and eating eggs every day and being so sick and tired of eating eggs. It is hard for me today to eat eggs sometimes because I ate them for a period of time when I didn't want to.
Our bodies do a great job naturally telling us what to eat if we intuitively listen.
Diets take away your ability to trust your body.
When we no longer rely on our body to tell us what, when and how much to eat we are essentially not trusting our body and its natural cues.
Diets keep you isolated and withdrawn from people and social situations.
When dieting we are often worried about social situations or events because we will be "tempted" and unable to "stick to our diet." So we often avoid being social altogether, so dieting causes even more shame and isolation.
Dieting is linked to the development of eating disorders.
When we diet we walk that fine line of disordered eating, which unfortunately could fall into eating disorder behavior all too easily, especially binge eating disorder.
Diets cause STRESS.
Being stressed out is not fun. It is especially not fun to be stressed out about eating - something that happens 3x a day.
Physical & Biological Damage from Diets
Chronic dieting teaches the body to retain fat because by dieting you are putting your body into starvation mode thus it wants to hold on to fat and store energy.
Over time dieting produces the opposite effect than the dieter is looking for. Dieting causes fat retention and storage.
Chronic dieting slows down weight loss with each dieting attempt.
Do you remember that first time you dieted? You likely lost the weight pretty effortlessly. It is also likely as the dieting attempts went on it was harder and harder to lose the weight.
Dieting decreases metabolism.
Metabolism is important because it is the process that converts food into energy. If our metabolism is slower we are going to have less energy. You are not going to have a lot of energy if you dieting and are not eating enough food while dieting.
Dieting increases binge eating and cravings.
When we restrict food of any kind our brain is signaled and freaks out a little bit, which also causes us to crave whatever it is we cannot have. If we give in to those cravings we perceive this is "messing up" and might binge on whatever it is that we crave and more.
Dieting increases the risk of heath disease and premature death.
This comes from the Framingham Heart Study which studied more than 3,000 men and women over 32 years of yo-yo dieting.
Dieting causes fullness cues to go away.
When we diet we have a difficult time figuring out when we are hungry and when we are full. Biologically our hormones get all messed up and over time struggle to signal hunger and fullness to our brains.
Dieting causes your body shape to change.
When we diet the hope is our body shape would morph into the thin ideal, but years of dieting do the opposite. It causes us to carry more weight.
If you are like most other American women diets have likely been a part of your life for a long time. Even though the evidence is so obvious we carry that hope that "This diet could be the one." We say certain eating plans or a certain type of healthy eating is not a diet...but it really is and they are causing you to feel horrible about yourself.
I promise you there is another way. You can break up with diets forever and find FREEDOM and PEACE in your body and with food.
Again if you are looking for where to go instead of dieting...I highly recommend Intuitive Eating. This is such a great book that will nurture your brain and your body when it comes to eating and food.
Why might dieting be hard for you to leave? How might your relationship with food and your body change if you were not on a diet?
If you are looking to improve your relationship with your body or your relationship with food give us a call or shoot us an email. We would love to help you get started on your intuitive eating journey.
In body love,
Chelsea
Encounter Counseling offers in-person counseling in Grand Junction and online counseling state-wide in Colorado including Denver, Boulder, Ft. Collins and Colorado Springs.
