Weekly Wellness: Reject the diet mentality in 2022!

Recovering diet junkie here!✌️Most of my life I thought that weight loss was the secret ingredient to my happiness. I yo-yo dieted for years waiting for the weight loss key to unlock that happy life I was longing for. I was surrounded by love from my husband, my kids, my friends & my family....but yet I felt so unhappy when I looked in the mirror. I had no love for MYSELF. 

Part of my inner healing journey was discovering that weight loss was NOT the answer to my happiness. Once I started to heal myself from the inside out...I noticed myself starting to treat my body with compassion, coming from a place of gratitude than disgust. Once of the ways I have started to heal this part of me is through Intuitive Eating. The first principle of this anti-diet approach is rejecting the diet mentality. We see diet mentality in the news, social media, yoga studios, grocery stores, restaurants, and even sadly see diet mentality among friends, family members, and in some healthcare professionals. Sometimes the diet message is loud but many times it is disguised as “healthy lifestyle changes” or even “intuitive eating for weight loss”.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear....Intuitive eating is not a weight loss diet!

Let's break it down a bit. Diet mentality is a false belief that diets for weight loss create health and happiness. Diet mentality steals your joy by saying you should delay your dreams until you have lost weight. It disconnects you from your own body sensations, making you feel powerless and like you can not be trusted to make decisions about what to feed your body.  Diet mentality is the mean voice you hear over and over which places food into good and bad or healthy and unhealthy. Food holds no moral value...only a nutritional value. Diet mentality is the voice that tells you ridiculous rules such as “no eating after 7pm”, “no carbs after lunch”, or “no dessert because you didn’t exercise”.  Many people think this voice means they should have more control. Rather, this voice acts like a bully that keeps you from living your fullest life. I talk all about this in this video - Click here to watch!

Society is shifting views and finally learning that diets don’t work. We know that dieting fails most of the time and dieting is a leading predictor of weight gain. But many people have trouble letting go of the diet mentality mindset, partly because they just don’t know what to think or do instead. It’s very hard to change behaviors and no one should feel ashamed if they need more support!

Here are 5 ways you can start to reject diet mentality:

1. Step out of comfort zones! Do something that you’ve been wanting to do or try. Don’t save that thing for when you change your body shape/size.
2. Think about your favorite foods and repeat over and over “there are no good or bad foods”. Make sure you eat at least one of those favorite meals or snacks this week. Remembering that food doesn't hold a moral value!!!
3. Don’t weigh yourself today, all week, all month, or even all year! The scale does not define health.
4. Narrow your social media feed. Unfollow anyone that posts unrealistic, unhelpful “health” messages on social media. You do not need to get stuck in the comparison trap.
5. Realize you are so much more than your weight or your body shape/size. List your values and what makes you special and what makes you YOU! Don’t be afraid to take up space in this world. You deserve happiness and health as a human being.