Four reasons not to diet

Posted on 24 April, 2019

Both men and women feel a huge amount of pressure to look a certain way and are driven to restrictive, fun-sucking, anti-social obsessive and disordered eating patterns that are socially acceptable and sold under the guise of “diets”.

“I’ve done some pretty crazy diets over the years. It started from age seven…and I wish I could go back and tell my younger self: “DON’T EVER TRY TO LOSE WEIGHT ”

This is just one, of hundreds of sentiments that I’ve heard over the years since I became a nutritionist and started helping people lose weight. And it saddens me.

Here’s the story.

The average Australian, according to population research, is overweight. And, according to more research, being overweight increases a person’s risk of poor health and quality of life. Unfortunately, we live in what’s been coined an ‘obesigenic’ environment. We’re surrounded by high energy, delicious foods that are easy to overeat and achieve low levels of physical activity. In other words, the natural state of our society and the way we live our lives promotes long term weight gain.

To make matters worse, our culture is rife with ‘fat’ stigma and body shaming. Overweight people are often regarded as ‘lazy’ and having ‘no self-control’ and our culture criticises people for the size and shape of their body. Body shaming is further enhanced by the glorification of thin, lean and small bodies and it’s this same shape that’s splashed across media and marketing in nearly all areas of our lives.

Both men and women feel a huge amount of pressure to look a certain way and the shame, disgust and guilt associated with their body drives them—not to sustainable, long term healthy eating patterns, but to restrictive, fun-sucking, anti-social obsessive and disordered eating patterns that are socially acceptable and sold under the guise of “diets”.

Here’s the same story in a way you might relate to better…

You’re overweight. You feel unhealthy. You find yourself frequently eating low nutrient, high energy foods and it’s hard to stop sometimes. Exercise is difficult. You spend a lot of time sitting. And life is full, it’s hard to find the energy to do anything extra.

You feel worthless. And more than that you feel second-rate compared to thinner people around you. People close to you make snide remarks about “how much you love food” and scrolling through your Instagram feed only fuels the self-loathing even further.

You heard this great nutritionist on HerCanberra talk some really sensible advice about adding in whole foods and taking a positive approach to change your eating habits, but you feel the pressure of being stuck in a body you hate and the lure of that new diet that will help you lose weight quickly. Apparently it ‘melts fat off your body’. Your friend has dropped 10kg already, surely this time, it’s the answer you’re looking for.

And so, here you go again, starting the diet on Monday. And just like before you encounter the same problems. And just like before you fail.

Why? You become victim to the perils of dieting.

Trying to follow restrictive eating patterns results in overeating

From cutting calories to removing whole foods groups, diets work by setting rules that eliminate the opportunity for you to consume calories, thereby making you lose weight quickly. It doesn’t matter if you’re fasting, shake dieting, counting calories or removing all grains, legumes and dairy (Paleo), its the restriction that’s helping you lose weight, not the food combos.

The problem is that when you tell someone not to eat something, they can’t help but eat it. Or they at least think about eating it only to eat it eventually. This comment from a past dieter sums it up nicely:

“I think the issue with diets is that, by and large, they’re not sustainable. We cut calories and cut out food groups that we then crave. And we can stay on the wagon for a short while but ultimately we fall off and binge on everything we weren’t allowed to eat on the diet. And once you’ve got the taste of all that food it’s hard to go back to a strict diet and all the weight goes back on again.”

Restrictive diets lead to heightened appetite for up to 12 months after the diet is over

There is nothing quite like the insatiable hunger at the end of a few weeks of strict dieting. Constantly denying and ignoring hunger cues, combined with fatigue and a stressful situation and you have a recipe for overeating disaster.

My ‘best’ post-diet binge resulted in seven pieces of toast with butter and honey being consumed in under 10 minutes and then an appetite that raged for months to come. Suffice to say I ended the whole process heavier and more messed up in my food habits than I was at the beginning.

Research actually shows that after a sustained period of calorie restriction the body’s appetite is increased, leading to an increased calorie consumption and—you guessed it—you put the weight straight back on.

Learning to listen to your body, combined with whole food choices, can help avoid this whole scenario.

Diets often lead to obsessive behaviours and aren’t flexible to your needs

I dieted many years ago and was counting calories and tracking exercise. Not in a healthy, sustainable way. I became so obsessive that if I forgot to wear my heart rate monitor for an exercise session, I’d do that exercise session again, just so I could be sure that I burnt the recommended 500 calories.

If I didn’t know the calorie content of something, I wouldn’t eat it—or if I did eat it, I’d throw in an extra exercise session just to make sure it was covered and ‘burnt’. Not a happy place to be in at all.

Now, as a nutritionist who has helped lots of people lose weight, I know as well as any person that you need to create a consistent energy deficit so that your body burns body fat. However, there are sustainable, realistic and less obsessive ways to achieve this. They are slower but they are gentler and so much kinder, and I believe this is the most important part.

Diets promote food shaming and scaremongering 

This is a comment I received from a member of a self-love Facebook group about being a nutritionist who helps people build long term habits and healthy relationships with food rather than helping people ‘shred fat fast’.

“I imagine its tough to teach people about health supportive foods in a way that doesn’t demonise some foods or label foods and food consumption behaviour as ‘good’ or ‘bad’.”

You better believe it! It’s super hard! And people almost expect me to be judgemental. If I go over to a friend’s house to eat and they serve something that is considered unhealthy, they apologise. And I’m constantly saying, ‘Seriously! I don’t care what we’re eating, I’m just loving being at your house and in your company.’

In terms of my nutrition, I feel in complete confidence that I feed myself well so that I don’t have to worry about what other people feed me. I’m confident in my ability to stop when I’m full and listen to my body. If I stop enjoying something I stop eating it. No one tells me what I should and shouldn’t eat.

I make food choices based on nourishment, foods I like to eat, foods that make me feel good, as well as all the other practical things like ease, convenience, what my family eat and what’s available at the time.

You know what’s better than dieting?

Ditching food rules and being free.

If you’re not dieting then what are you doing? You’re eating. So just eat. Listen to your body and take the pressure off trying to eat a certain way. It’s a wonderful feeling to not live with the constant weight of always thinking about food.

Adding in whole foods.

Seriously, do it. Instead of cutting foods out, focus your efforts on adding them in. Increase your intake of fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes and other whole foods and see how much better you feel.

Practising self-love.

You don’t have to be wishy-washy or post photos online to love yourself. But if you do want to do that, you go girl! Self-love is making a commitment to making the internal dialogue towards yourself gentle, kind and encouraging. And that can only be a good thing.