Why is dieting so hard?
How to break down the mental barriers of dieting and why choosing to start now is more important than starting on Monday.
The difference between quitting drugs and dieting is that you don’t constantly see adverts on TV or end-of-aisle promotions of shiny, branded and appealing products shoved in your face around every corner. At least the drug industry is seen as a negative and therefore you have societal pressures reminding you of the drawbacks of taking drugs. Cake eating is actively encouraged by friends, family, companies, work colleagues, birthday party goers, even charities.. the list continues.
Which diet do you choose?
There are so many diets out there that all claim to be the ‘best’ diet going, shakes, bars, meal replacement tablets, no wheat, low carb, high fat, high protein, plant based, paleo, intermittent fasting, detox diets, low fat, flexitarian, mediterranean, macrobiotic, raw food etc. The market is utterly flooded with different experts and companies offering different ways of making you lose weight. Some making attractive claims such as 'lose a stone in a month’ you start to imagine your life a stone lighter at the end of the month and all of a sudden it feels like a great idea.
We are ultimately creatures of habit and lazy at that. If we can do something that removes the need to think then that is the option we will go for. It’s human nature, we are hard wired to conserve energy.
Take this as a scenario.
Let’s say you have a meeting late at night, you know there isn’t much in the fridge that you particularly want to (or can be arsed to) cook, you promised your friend you would delve into the darkest pit of your garage to find that bike pump that she asked to borrow, you need to empty the washing machine from earlier this morning before your clothes smell like a damp tea-towel, you still need to change the bedsheets and it’s already 7pm!
What do we do? Go to the shop and spend time browsing, perhaps pick something up like chicken, rice and vegetables and take it home to cook and eat, which by then it might be well into 8pm or later or do we head to McDonald’s, be home and eaten by 7:10pm ready to fight the garage?
All diets do the same thing, despite what they claim to do. In order to lose weight it is calories in vs calories out. It takes an extra 3,500 calories to gain a pound. If you are 6lbs heavier than you want to be then thank the extra 21,000 calories you rewarded your self with. It’s just so easy to do though isn’t it?
Ultimately it doesn’t matter which diet you choose. My mother for instance has had incredible success on the ketogenic diet. Of course I’ve given this a bash, essentially it is a high fat, low carb diet. There are different forms of this diet such as clean keto and dirty keto (feel free to google these) but the premise is the same. Carbs are the devil. I went on this diet and managed around 3 weeks. I lost around a pound a day - what a result! But the minute your fat balance is slightly too high you can expect to have diarrhoea and lots of it. In dirty keto you can still eat McDonald’s etc but you remove the carbs, so you might have a beef burger patty, bacon, cheese, salad but hold the bun. You would use this similar thought pattern in all your meals. Going out for a meal? Just have the steak and salad, skip the chips. But really the only thing you are truly doing is cutting out calories. Calories in vs Calories out is all you need to lose weight. Cut your calories by around 300-500 and you will consistently lose pounds week on week.
So, if it’s as simple as Calories in vs Calories out, why can’t I do it?
You’ve had a hard day at work and you may use that age old ‘I deserve a treat’ whilst reaching for the snack cupboard or the leaflet for the takeaway delivery service. Or my all time favourite which I have used for years ‘I’ll start on Monday’. Why aren’t we capable of dieting successfully? Why is temptation around every corner? Why do I stay on the bandwagon for 3 weeks and then it all goes to pot? I’m also the queen of eating something a bit filthy in the morning and deciding that the rest of the day should be the same ‘Well, I’ve ruined it now, I’ll start again tomorrow’ where I continue to eat everything in sight. Sometimes the start-again doesn’t actually start tomorrow it can start weeks or months later by which time I have piled on the pounds. We all know how to diet, we all know how it works, so why is it so difficult to do?
I truly believe the answer isn’t a 6:30am personal training class or £50 a session with a nutritionist (although I am not discrediting that these are fantastic for support), you are already capable, you don’t need someone to tell you what to do, how to eat, when to eat, how to exercise etc. Other people won’t change your mindset, these changes have got to be made internally and I’m afraid to gain the most success you need to rely on YOU. But in order to do this, you have got to change the dialogue you have with yourself and this is perhaps the hardest part of dieting. It really is a holistic approach. I’m not trying to get all ‘hippy’ on you but in order to change your body, you have to change your mind.
The ‘That’s it’ Moment
We’ve all hit that moment where we decide that we need radical change because we can’t stand the way we are feeling anymore, the waist band is too tight and you feel like you look awful in all the clothes that you try on, you question how you ended up getting this big! So that’s it, you go away and start researching different weight loss diets. You already know how this works you’ve already tried various diets but this time you mean business (unlike the last 60 attempts). You’ve got the latest app, you’ve bought a new notepad to track your calories, you have bought one of those drinking bottles that shows how much you need to drink in a day, you’ve researched some recipes you might have even filled your fridge with lettuces. This is it, you are going to go in hard, you are going to lose a stone by the end of the month just like the website said. You are going to live off lettuce for breakfast, lunch and dinner and then you will be happy with what you see in the mirror.
But just like the choice of the McDonald’s after a hard day at work, the lettuce diet is never going to work. It’s not sustainable and even if you lost the weight you will only end up returning back to eating a whole rack of ribs, chips, coleslaw (and maybe a couple of onion rings) the minute that you walk into a Harvester.
You should absolutely utilise the power of a ‘that’s it’ moment. During this time you will have the most motivation and an impulsive surge to fight the fat. You should harness it. But you should also be realistic with yourself. You can’t change a lifetime of food abuse by eating lettuce for 3 weeks. This is the moment you need to have a good chat with yourself.
What Advice Would You Give Your Family?
So here is the thing, what we tell others is definitely not the same as we tell ourselves. Why is that? The love and protection that we feel for our friends and family, the advice we give them, the support and the care. Yet we never treat ourselves in the same vain?
If your best friend had been trying to lose weight, she was desperately unhappy about the way she looked and felt, so much so that her confidence was faltering every time she looked in the mirror and resented the person in the reflection. If she ate 3 Big Macs and a side of large fries for lunch would you then say ‘Oh no, oh well you’ve fucked it now, you might as well eat the whole Viennetta whilst you are at it!”
No!
You would never, ever say that (unless you are a shitty friend). You would treat them with care, you can see that they want to achieve a goal, you can see that they are hurting and they are not happy with their choices. So you may say something such as ‘it’s ok, you are allowed to have a slip up every now and again, get back on it, what are you going to have for dinner? You could make a salad with that really nice roasted butternut squash that you do?”.
So here is the punch line. I want you to think about someone that you really, really, really love whether it is your children, your parents, your partner, your siblings, your best friend. Someone you feel protective over, someone who you would always treat with compassion and kindness. If you could see that they were actively abusing their body every day through food which was spiralling into a loss of self-esteem would you say things such as ‘start on Monday’ or ‘you’ve had a rough day treat yourself to a Big Mac’ or ‘you’ve ruined it today, might as well have a Papa John’s for dinner’