13 Oct Why diet is a dirty word

Why diet is a dirty word (in my opinion)

When I hear the word diet, I immediately think of something short term,
unsustainable, restrictive, depressing…the list goes on. They are notorious for
being a quick fix that works well initially but will dismally fail at the end.
Remember the Atkins diet, low carb diets, the weight watchers, the 5:2 diet, there
was even a diet called the ‘chewing craze’ which involved eating as much as you
like but you had to chew it 100 times (the premise being the food would become
liquid and weight gain doesn’t come from liquid! Crazy hey?). Or what about the
good old cabbage diet, which is still practiced today, although, must be forgiven
for the amount of carbon dioxide that is contributed to the air pollution!

Dieting will fail due to the following:

Too restrictive

Restricting ourselves can cause low feelings or even depression. Many of the
nutrients in food affect the emotional centers of our brain and reducing these
nutrients can have an adverse effect on mood.

The metabolism slows

The metabolism slows down to conserve energy thinking we are in a famine. Then
as soon as you go off the diet, bam, all that weight goes back on. Scary stuff but
how smart are our bodies?

You think you require willpower…but you don’t..

You think you just need stronger willpower. We only have a finite amount of
willpower and that is used by having to make decisions so it can all be depleted by
mid morning if you are in a stressful job (or a busy mum like me!). Then you need
to use science to control your appetite. Think about why you are feeding yourself.
Is it to make you feel happier? Or is to fuel your body to make it
stronger/happier/more efficient?

You don’t have a plan

If we don’t plan then we really plan to fail. Health is not something that just
happens, it is something we plan like a holiday. We don’t set up the conditions for
automatic fitness and health. You need to plan the days you train and pencil them
in your diary as your health and fitness time, you need to plan your food ahead of
time by putting it in your diary. You even need to plan your relaxing time such as
meditating every morning before work for 15 minutes.

Health and weight loss are not a struggle. It’s not rocket science, just science!
See it as science and not so much emotion and it just may take the struggle out of
it and make it easier to plan and commit.