Let’s talk about the biggest dieting myth that makes it worse for you in the long-term.
The idea that food can be split into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ is quite frankly bullshit.
It’s the reason why you give up on the diet, pile all the weight back on, plus a few extra pounds!
It’s the reason why you have a love-hate relationship with food & struggle to have a little of what you fancy.
Plus it’s a slippery slope to binge-eating, guilt and feeling shitty about food.
I’ve been working with people to help them manage their weight and eat healthily for over a decade now (how the hell did that happen?! I’m still thinking the 90s was last decade…) The majority of people I’ve worked with have tried EVERYTHING to lose weight. All the diets & slimming clubs, you name it, they’ve tried it. Yet they’ve ended up bigger than when they first started!
My clients come to me confused with all these weird rules about eating that they’ve learnt from the diets & slimming-clubs. They’ve been told over & over again that they need to restrict their food.
“You’re not allowed to eat that, you’re on a diet!”
My clients tell me it’s refreshing to hear from me that they can eat WHATEVER they like. They’re relieved when I reassure them that they don’t have to eat perfectly all the time. Instead of strict diet-plans, we focus on building healthy habits.
It takes time to build healthy habits & a healthy relationship with food. Start by changing your perspective on food & weight. Flip your focus away from the dieting mentality of cutting things out completely or aiming for perfection, it isn’t necessary.
The most helpful thing I teach my clients is to let go of the biggest myth that the dieting industry teaches you about healthy eating. This idea that you can split food into ‘good’ and ‘bad’. You can’t label foods as ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’.
Nutrition isn’t as simple as that!
Lettuce isn’t ‘healthy’ because you couldn’t survive on just lettuce – I can’t even imagine how much you’d need to eat to get enough energy!
Likewise a piece of cake isn’t ‘unhealthy’ if it’s once in a while, as part of a well-balanced diet.
Healthy eating is about the overall balance of everything you eat & drink.
You need to eat a range of different foods to get all the different nutrients you need. When you nourish your body, you’re more likely to feel satisfied. Then you’re less likely to have cravings or pick & snack between meals. You can help yourself plan well-balanced meals with my free downloadable Anti-dieting Meal Planner here.
It’s time to ditch the ‘good/bad’ labels you attach to food.
I see it all the time, when you label some foods as ‘good’ & ‘healthy’, you think you can eat as much as you like of them. But no food should be unlimited, because you don’t need to be eating constantly all day. What happens when that food isn’t available? You’d be better off learning to follow your appetite & hunger cues and explore your reasons for eating when you’re not hungry.
On the other hand, when you ban foods you want them more. Then when you have the ‘bad’ foods, you beat yourself up for ‘failing’. Coz let’s face it, the ‘naughty’ foods are always the things that you love most, so you’re going to eat them at some point right?! You tell yourself you’ve been bad when you have them & you feel guilty. So then you eat more coz “you may as well; you’ve blown it!”
Before you know it you’re stuck in that guilt-binge cycle – no fun!
Do yourself a favour and ditch this dieting mentality. Chuck out those labels you attach to foods like; ‘bad’, ‘naughty’, ‘banned’, ‘sinful’, as well as ‘clean’, ‘healthy’, ‘good’. Instead focus on food being fuel & nourishment, because that’s what it is and nothing more.
Give yourself permission to have what you love and remember you’re a good person no matter what you’ve eaten. Try telling yourself that, use it like a mantra until you believe it. Coz you ARE a good person no matter what you’ve eaten.
Even if you know you’ve overdone it on the doughnuts – don’t panic! It’s only one day! You don’t need to eat perfectly to be healthy; it’s about what you do ‘most’ of the time.
Ditch that crappy dieting mentality it only makes things worse!
You deserve better than all that.
And let’s face it, life without cake & chocolate is just a bit shit really isn’t it?!
Need help to ditch dieting forever? Want to eat normally again AND lose weight healthily ..? While still enjoying the cake & chocolate? Hell yes!
I can help you ditch dieting forever, either with my 1-2-1 support. Or if you prefer to work independently, you can learn all the skills I teach my 1-2-1 clients, on my ‘No More Diets’ online course.
My Weekly Round-up! AKA; what I’ve been up to recently…
- My current tea choice is Earl grey tea, plus I’ve been drinking loads more water as I’ve had a sore, dry throat this week.
- Not been out on many walks this week as I’ve picked up Genevieve’s germs from last week. So there’s a lack of bird nerdery to report this week. I’ve barely seen any interesting birds apart from some blue tits that were very cute taking it in turns to visit the window bird-feeder. Plus a robin on the tea-cup birdfeeder.
- Speaking of birdfeeders – check out my tea-cup one in the photo below. I got it this time last year and I wasn’t sure how long the original string would last outside. Well it finally broke over the summer, I found it hanging by one of the strings. I reckon it was caused by one of the massive cheeky woodpigeons that kept over-turning it. But this weekend I fixed it by swapping the rope for some washing line and it’s working pretty well!
- Looking forward to the new season of ‘The Witcher’ that starts this month. Sam & I thought it’d be a good idea to watch the 1st season in the run-up… but we’ve got through it all it too quick! Now we have to wait a week – how on earth did we manage in the olden days when we had to wait a week between episodes – ha! Oh and another TV programme we’ve enjoyed recently was the 2nd season of ‘Locke & Key’. How amazing is Key House?! I’m gutted it’s not a real place, otherwise it’d be on my list of places to visit!
- I was meaning to try to do more hula-hooping this week. But the daily exercises have gone out the window since I’ve been feeling rough. I reckon I’ll be back on it next week. As I say to my clients – a relapse doesn’t have to be a collapse!
