You wake up in a fabulous mood, had a good night sleep and are ready for your day.  On your way to work, you walk into the local grocery store to pick up some coffee for the office and proceed to the check-out line. As you are waiting in line, you look to your left, and this is what you see.  Racks of magazines with these headlines:

• Lose 5 pounds overnight!
• Drop 10 pounds in the next 4 days!
• Flatten your stomach in 3 minutes a day!

Invasion of Diet Culture

Instantly your mood shifts. You look down at your stomach and sigh because the guilt and shame have stormed in as you wonder why you ate last nights dessert.

You’re not alone. Diet culture is everywhere, especially this time of year.  The diet guru’s come out of hiding and swarm into your days.

There is no escaping it.  From the grocery store, drug store and office to the TV, and social media: ‘Eat this’, ‘Don’t eat that’, ‘Keto this and Paleo that’.  And the sad truth is, it always seems to get your attention.

Enough already!  

The truth about diets

It is well researched and proven that…

• 95% of dieters regain the weight that they have lost (with 66% gaining even more!)
• Dieting slows down your metabolism (so you gain weight faster when not dieting)
• Dieting raises the fat storing hormone cortisol and increases stress (thus signaling your body to hold onto fat for protection!)
• Dieting eats away at important lean body tissue
• When your dieting, your obsessed with thoughts of food

And yet, many of you find yourselves searching for the magic pill, or a plan that will help you lose weight, or change your body.

I get it, I have spent 76% of my life (yes, I did the math) either “ON” or “OFF” a diet.  Always looking for “THE ONE”.  The one that will work, that will finally make me “happy”.  I even did the same ones repeatedly.  Because, you see, they worked, once.  I lost weight on Jenny Craig…3 times. No wonder Diet Culture is a 72-billion-dollar industry.  How much money, time, and energy have you spent searching and struggling to find the “right one”.  

Always thinking if it worked once, it should work again, right?  Well, I have found out the hard way, that is FALSE, because our bodies change. They actually adapt to dieting behavior!  What worked when you were 20, will probably not work when you are 40….

AND, depending on your own diet history, your body can get really good at dieting!  Thus, making weight loss more and more difficult each time you try.

Here is the thing:

If diets worked, why do we still have such a plethora of them surrounding us?

More truth about dieting

Remind yourself how you feel when you go on a diet…

• Deprived
• Punished … like you’re not good enough as you are
• Weak, tired, and lethargic
• Depressed
• Obsessive about exercise and calorie intake
• Stressed out about being with family and friends
• Overly emotional
• Short-Tempered
• Self-Critical while looking in the mirror (including more body checking)
• And withdrawn and isolating.

There is A Better Way

“What if you decided NEVER TO GO ON A DIET AGAIN?”

What would that look like? And more importantly, what would it FEEL LIKE?

Making this decision for me was the single most important decision I made for myself.  (you can read my story in the book The Body Joyful-My journey from self-loathing to self-acceptance)  I am now free, and you can be too. Here is how…

Enter Intuitive Eating

As soon as I made the decision to Reject Diet Culture, (which Is the first principle of Intuitive eating) I found myself feeling empowered.  I also began to have the opportunity to…

• Move and exercise how and when I want (without thinking about external factors)
• Have all the energy I needed to do whatever I wanted to do
• Enjoy all foods with friends, family, or alone
• Not be defined by comments from others
• Understand and empathize with the struggles of others around food and weight
• Feel comfortable and confident in my ‘here and now’ body
• Be free from the hours of counting and calculating
• Feel free to wear clothes that are comfortable
• Release the shame and guilt around eating and food
• Not stress over going to the beach, getting photographed, or trying on clothes.

Tuning into you

Choosing to tune into yourself and look inside, rather than seeking outside of yourself through external plans and programs makes sense.  We are all genetically different.  So, what feels good for one person, may not feel good for someone else.

Intuitive eating is all about connecting with your own body.  Your hunger, your fullness, your satisfaction, your unique, one-of-a-kind body.  It is a series of 10 Principles that free you from diet culture, and guide you towards freedom with food, eating, and yourself.  Stay tuned for our next blog, where I will share more about these 10 principles and how you can begin to turn up the volume on tuning into your body.

If you are looking to connect with an empowered, supportive community who embraces Intuitive eating AND feeling more comfortable and confident in their bodies, head over to The Body Joyful Revolution Community (a private Facebook page). It is full of free resources and tools.  See you there!