5 reasons NOT to start a diet this new year

1. Failure is the probable result: most diets fail to help you lose weight or keep it off for any length of time. It is very likely that you'll regain the weight back - if you have managed to actually lose any.  They fail for many reasons- mostly because you are human and diets are made for robots. What I mean is that humans (YOU!) were meant to eat good food, enjoy foods you love once in a while, eat with flexibility and eat with pleasure and occasionally for pleasure. Most diets take all of that away. They quiet your greatest internal food expert (hunger and fullness) and make you focus on an outside "expert" (a meal plan, forbidden foods, pills, etc).

2. You'll always get what you've always gotten and then some:  If you have tried many diets in the past, and they have failed (presumably this is the reason why you want to start another one...), then chances are it won't work. NOT because you've failed or did something wrong, but because dieting is a failed concept. Unfortunately, lack of losing weight may not be your only negative. Most people take their lack of success personally and fell like they themselves are failures rather than blaming the outrageous promises of the diet. Ads for diets are meant to hook you in; promise crazy results with even crazier suggestions of how to cut out food and fun. They are meant to dazzle and prey on people's desperation to lose weight. Shame on them- NOT on you. Perhaps if we didn't regard "being skinny" as the ultimate greatness, they would have less power.



3. There is a good change you may actually gain weight: not losing weight is a bummer. Gaining weight is an even bigger let down. This can be due to a few factors-  they can lower your "metabolism" (slow down the amount of calories you burn), increase your appetite and preoccupation with food as well as disconnecting your from your hunger and fullness cues.

4. They are a waste of good money: there are SO MANY other ways, that are far less costly and more effective to help you make changes to your life and diet. The secret all those diet books, pills and plans aren't telling you- you can do it on your own with a few helpful books or websites. AND you don't have to swallow any nasty shakes or bars. Consulting with a registered dietitian who are the experts on weight management will likely give you weight management tools that will help you for the rest of your life (vs diets that only help for the next few weeks). Just make sure you find one who specializes in weight management and takes the mindful eating/ intuitive eating approach.

5. They do not get to the bottom of why you have a certain lifestyle: they do not address the reasons why you emotionally eat, overeat, eat when you are not hungry and other hugely important aspects. They may claim they do this but many are too focused on meal plans, counting carbs/points or special products to actually help you explore these habits. Doing mental exercises that help you understand why you eat, why certain foods are chosen over others, and what emotions push you to eat are rarely included. In fact, some diets may actually fuel your emotional and binge eating.

Stop emotional eating (for your sake and your children's)

The more I speak with people about dieting or weight loss, the more I realize that emotional eating plays a huge role. In my defense, I am not the instigator of this topic (and have a hard time talking about it with people outside of the consult room) but it does sometimes feel like an inevitable topic, especially with strangers.

There's the tired cliché about women who are sad, reaching for chocolates to sooth but emotional eating goes much more deep than this. Eating to spite someone (or go against their "helpful" diet advice), eating due to happiness or celebration and eating due to loneliness are all examples.

Stress is perhaps the biggest culprit. Stress from work, home or social life has been a huge influence for many of my clients. It's not always obvious to them but most evening snacking sessions can be due to stress from the day. Making time to reduce stress and have a few moments to breath during the day can help reduce relying on food's ability to calm you down at night. Things like "I deserve this snack because I worked so hard all day" or "because I skipped lunch" or "taxied everyone around this evening" are not uncommon reasons we give ourselves to eat when we are not hungry. It is important to eat foods you love, to eat when you are hungry and to sometimes eat for pleasure rather than necessity. However, eating to reduce stress is a vicious circle, Especially if you are doing it on a regular basis. Most people who are not mindful eaters tend to increase feelings of guilt and anxiety, rather than feel comforted, when eating comfort foods.


Focusing on eating when you are hungry and asking yourself "why do I want to eat" before reaching for food when you are not, is just one way to start being more aware of emotional eating. Of course, the biggest issue with emotionally driven eating is possible weight gain and not being hungry at meals.


Another reason for reducing emotional eating was recently highlighted in a study involving children and parents. It found that offering food to children to soothe their "negative emotions (i.e. sadness, anxiety, etc) was the number one thing parents can do to encourage emotional eating by the child. Unfortunately, the impact of the parents doesn't stop there. The study also suggested that the parent's "emotional feeding practices" (i.e. emotional eating) can influence their children's emotional eating. So it is suggested that there are two ways to reduce emotional eating in children- stop using food to ease their negative emotions (i.e. ice cream to ease sadness or to cheer up the child) and take a look at (and stop) the parent's own emotional eating.

You can read more about this study (Associations between child emotional eating and general parenting style, feeding practices, and parent psychopathology) here.

2013 Walk for Heart benefiting the Heart and Stroke Foundation

Stop by my booth at the 2013 Walk for Heart in Montreal