How to avoid dieting in 5 steps

Diets don't work. They are especially toxic for your relationship with food and your body. So what is left to do if you want to improve your eating or manage your weight? Try these tips to avoid falling back on dieting this year.

1. Reconnect with your hunger levels: everyone already has a way to "regulate" their eating and it has nothing to do with other people's diet advice. Listening to your very own hunger signals is the first step to reconnecting with your body's needs. No diet book, diet guru or meal plan will ever know how much or what you need to eat at any particular moment. Only you know what you want to eat, how much of it you need to feel satisfied and if you are truly hungry. It can seem scary at first especially if you have not relied on your own hunger cues in a long time, but chances are you will eat less if you follow your true hunger than if you ignore it. For most people who claim they are never hungry or feel fullness, chances are they have stopped listening to the cues long ago but the good news is that anyone can reconnect with these signals. This does take time and practice to get it right, but its worth the work! Read more about hunger levels and how to reconnect with them here.

2. Recognize when you are eating without being hungry: hearing your hunger (and fullness) cues is important for pointing when you are eating without hunger. Most people have eaten without feeling hungry at least once in their life. However, when this happens often it can lead to unhappiness and not actually fix the problems or emotions that are occurring. If you are not hungry, eating food does not help to relieve any sadness or loneliness or anxiety you may be experiencing. Negative emotions and situations cannot be helped with food and most people feel even worse after comforting themselves with food (especially true with people who are not intuitive eaters). First step is to acknowledge when you are eating without being hungry. After that, you can decide if you want to eat anyway, distract yourself from the craving or deal with the emotions that may be influencing you to eat.

3. Start peeling off those food labels ("good" food or "bad"): the more a food is forbidden, the more it is tempting to eat. Labeling foods as bad often does not lead to eating less of it. In fact, it often leads to binges if they are after avoided for a long time and if they are some of your favourite foods. Whats the point of avoiding, say ice cream, if you are going to binge on a pint of it at the end of the month. Just like in life, foods and nutrition are rarely just black and white. There is a lot of gray area- which can be harder to navigate than good vs bad. Again, the payoff of learning to live in a world of grays is worth the hard work. Taking the labels of foods can be scary and difficult. Some people are worried they may binge or over eat if foods are no longer off limits. However, with time the "I want what I can't have" does wear off. Often these forbidden foods taste better with a "bad" label and when that label is removed, they aren't as tasty or tempting.


4. Include all foods into your diet. This tip goes hand in hand with #3. This may mean re-introducing forbidden foods- especially if you find yourself binging on them. At first you may feel vulnerable and tempted to overindulge on these foods. However the more you practice enjoying these foods without guilt the easier it will become to eat them in moderation. When the foods become less forbidden, the need or desire to eat more than we want to, slowly goes away. Trust me- everyone thinks that this is impossible- but it will happen if you give it a chance. If you binge eat on a regular basis, you may want to enlist the help of a dietitian who specializes in eating disorders to help you with this step.

5. Write down exactly what changes you want to make. Most people know what they want to change, it's finding the way to make those changes that is the hard part. You don't need to be told to eat more fruit and veg or go to bed earlier but finding ways to carry out these changes takes effort. Focusing on actual things to change rather than "wanting to lose weight" gives you something tangible to do. Goals or changes you want to make should be action based- and wanting to lose weight or improve your relationship with food is not an action. What are you going to do to make these desires come true? Eat one fruit every day? Record your 10pm show so you can get to bed earlier? Try tracking the actions you want to take in order to remind yourself of your progress and successes.

"Successful" weight management

Many studies have proven that the best source of motivation for lifestyle changes is seeing success and feeling like your efforts are making a difference. However, many of my clients "see" or perceive their successes differently and too often with a skewed view.

Defining the success of anything involves multiple factors. For example,  a "successful" business not only means it is making money, but also that they have loyal customers, the employees are happy, and the company is growing. "Successfully" raising children not only means they are kept alive until the age of 18, but that they can critically think for themselves, are respectful, healthy, etc.
So why is it that defining success for weight loss is often only based on the number of pounds you lose? Like in the examples above, there are other factors to consider such as your health, happiness, self esteem, waist circumference, relationship with food and ability to plan and prepare healthy meals.

Defining success as a change in the numbers on a scale does not show you the whole picture. It does not acknowledge all the time and efforts put into meal planning, prepping, recipe searching, extra time spent exercising or reading labels.

So, next time you feel down about your lack of change in your weight despite all the hard work you've done, make a check list of all the other accomplishments you want to carry out to lose weight. Go through the list and focus on accomplishing these tasks- seeing all the boxes checked will help to boost your motivation and keep you on track.

A new year, a new strategy for weight loss

Most people see the new year as a time to buckle down and improve their health. Often times, losing weight is a part of the resolution and the first plan that comes to mind is to "just eat less food". It is true that the majority of us eat portions that are too large and eat when we are not hungry which leads to eating too much. However, just eating a smaller quantity of food may not be the best strategy (especially on its own) to lose weight.
This is true for 2 reasons:
1. Our body and mind get used to a certain amount and timing of food. So, if we eat less at a meal or skip a habitual snack, we tend to be hungry, regardless of if we actually ate an adequate amount of calories that day.
2. If we cut down on certain satiating foods (foods that help us to feel full and stay full) such as protein or fiber, we will truly be hungry at which point the temptation to return to our old habits is hard to resist.

So, whats the right strategy?

Firstly, take a look at the timing of your meals and snacks. How are you expected to cut down on portions of fatty meat or heaps of starchy side dishes if you come to the dinner table famished? It is important that you feed your brain and body every few hours- even if you are looking to lose weight. By eating every 3-4 hours, you will never be too hungry (or too full) and regulating portion sizes at meals becomes less of a battle. So, if you are someone who eats a small breakfast, a quick lunch then aim to have a mere salad at supper (and feel full and satisfied) you are asking for trouble. Usually, evening snacking ensues when we finally breakdown to the hunger and binge on unhealthy snacks. All the determination you had at the beginning of the day is forgotten and you feel guilty. If only you added a healthy mid-afternoon snack and made sure your lunch was balanced (a source of carbs/starchy food/grain products, a lean protein choice and veggies) you would likely avoid being too hungry before and after supper.

Secondly, the point is to decrease the calories you eat on a daily basis, not necessarily less bulk. Replacing high calorie foods with healthier options usually does not mean cutting down on the volume you eat. For example, you can eat a bagel and cream cheese for breakfast OR a bowl of cereal with milk, a yogurt with 1 cup of berries and glass of juice all for the same amount of calories. The second example contains more fiber (about 18 grams versus 3g!!), more protein and less fat (5g versus 12g). More fiber and more protein means that the breakfast will last you longer into the morning with less munching and more portion control over lunchtime portions.

The same idea can be applied to your choice of snacks. The point is not to eliminate snacks, but to make wise choices that will not add up to a ton of calories at the end of the day. Instead of a few cookies, go for a granola bar and a yogurt or instead of chips grab a personalized-size bag of popcorn.

And remember, setting REALISTIC goals is always No.1!! See earlier posts to learn how to set your own realistic goals for weight loss.

When reaching for the stars may not be best

Setting goals is useful when we want to make a change- whether it be to our eating habits, activity levels or other aspects to our lives. However, setting a goal that is not realistic can actually be more harmful than helpful.

When it comes to goals, we have to keep in mind if they are long-term or short-term goals; are we expecting to achieve the objective in one year or in one month? Only setting long-term goals does not help us to trudge through the rough parts because we won't see the fruits of our labour for awhile. Taking things 4 weeks at a time helps to keep goals manageable and rewards you on a more regular basis.

Keeping that 4 weeks in mind, we have to remember what is possible to do in 4 weeks. For example, if your goal is to lose weight then you have to keep in mind how much weight you can lose. So if the body can lose 1 to 2 pounds per week then a realistic goal for 4 weeks would be about 6lbs. Unfortunately, many people tend to overestimate what they can achieve in a month. This step in the goal setting process is sooooo important!! Often people will be successful in making great changes to their lifestyles but because they set goals too high, they believe they have failed. Again for example, if you want to lose 20lbs in one month and you "only" lost 8lbs most people would feel unsuccessful. However, if you had set a realistic goal of losing a maximum of 8lbs, you would be ecstatic.

Let’s take another example: you want to be more active and decided to start walking. You are now walking once a week and you want to walk everyday (7 days a week). "Anything less is unacceptable". Well, maybe this weekend there is an all day soccer tournament then dinner at your in-laws, and then next week you have two 12 hour days plus a cake to make for the birthday supper on Thursday night. So, perhaps you were "only" able to squeeze four 30min walks into your schedule- your goal was to walk every single day so by definition you failed. Keep in mind that you walked more than you did in the past and perhaps 4 days a week is all you can manage right now. 4 walks are better than 1, no matter what you think you "should be doing". Why not congratulate yourself for the efforts you made rather than dwell on the negative?

Setting reasonable goals for yourself and trying to change things slowly in your lifestyle is much more successful in the long run because it helps to boost motivation and avoids falling back into bad habits.