There’s something you really need to know about me – I detest diets. Like, they make me cringe when I hear about them.
No matter how amazing or effective they may seem, they always make me cringe.
Why? Two reasons –
1. They may seem like they’re effective…for a while anyway. But they’re rarely effective in the long-term. Very VERY few people are able to have continued health benefits for any length of time afterward (weight loss, increased energy, etc).
2. They steal us away from our own inner sense of knowing how and what to eat. And for many of us, this disconnection can be so profound that, after following a fad diet, we have no idea how our body wants to be fed or even how to tap into that knowledge.
I know this all too well because, like many of you reading this, I’m a woman who has lived my entire life inside of our fatphobic dieting culture.
When I turned 12, I put myself on a secret diet that no one in my family knew about. I didn’t do it because I felt I needed to lose weight, I did it because I wanted to be more grown up and I thought that this is what women did as they got older.
As simple as that, I saw it as a fact of nature. So at 12 I started dieting.
At 14 I remember being afraid of my jeans getting too tight around the waist. I had no concept that being 14 meant my jeans would sooner or later get too tight. I was still growing and I hadn’t even developed hips yet…but that didn’t matter. I had an idea that my waist size was 25 inches (cringe) and any bigger would be a problem.
And, I KNOW I’m not alone in my early ideas of dieting. I’m sad when I think of teenage girls in today’s even crazier dieting culture who might be wrestling with these ideas too.
Dieting culture is so ingrained in the brains of women (and now, many men), that it can be hard to see the forest for the trees.
Plus, it can be really hard to tell the difference between eating a healthy diet and being on a diet. The health information out in the world is so skewed to the dieting culture that many people promoting restrictive dieting call it healthy eating.
(I believe this is mostly done unintentionally…dieting culture is just so pervasive)
Instead, I prefer the concept of Undieting. It’s a way of understanding your body’s needs through cravings, preferences, etc. It’s definitely a healthy diet, but it’s not a restrictive one. And the best part – it’s a very pleasurable one.
Pleasurable food, remember that?
Dieting culture tends to restrict anything that might taste too good. And it has encouraged us to use many words, like “sinful” and “guilty pleasure” to describe the food we love so much. We might even add a few “shouldn’ts” into our language before we indulge.
Undieting is all about wonderful, glorious, food freedom. Oh, and you’ll feel really good too :)
So, inside of this world where dieting culture has seeped into every part of our food decisions, how can we tell the difference between a diet and undieting?
First, let’s take a look at the especially problematic style of dieting - fad diets. Here are some big red flags that scream – this is a fad diet! Run far far away!!
1. You’re told, “THIS is the best way to lose weight!”
Frequently, a telltale sign of a fad diet is that they claim to have discovered a new understanding of human biology. Like with the Ketogenic Diet, many promoters claim that this is the newly discovered perfect diet of the future (cringe).
Pretending that human biology doesn’t exist or that we’ve discovered a new truth to human biology is a hallmark of a fad diet. And, at least so far, we’ve been dead wrong.
Remember the low/no-fat diet of the 1980s? It caused a spike in obesity and heart disease rates that was an unexpected shock to all of the low-fat diet experts. We don’t fully know yet what shunning carbs will do to our overall health.
And, if it was true that the Ketogenic diet is a “perfect” diet, then peoples whose traditional diets share many principals of the keto diet should have bodies that love being in ketosis. Sounds reasonable, right?
But…they don’t.
The Inuit peoples live a very low carb/high fat lifestyle for many months every year…and research has found that their bodies move into ketosis with much more difficulty that those eating a normal-carb diet throughout their lives.
This means that overtime, their bodies have adapted to NOT go into ketosis unless it’s absolutely necessary. That doesn’t look like a “perfect diet of the future” to me.
And that brings us to…
2. It vilifies one macronutrient (carbs, fat, or protein)
Macronutrients are all ESSENTIAL for our body to work properly.
In the low-fat 1980s, dieters didn’t receive enough essential fats to regulate inflammation. And, they didn’t have enough fat to balance out all of the sugar and refined carbs added to make the low-fat food taste better. The result of which was higher rates of obesity and heart disease…the two conditions the low-fat diet was supposed to protect us from.
In our current low-carb world, our body is missing out on the main macronutrient that brings energy into the body. While some people can do pretty okay on a lower carb diet, this can create huge sugar binges for those who have a particularly carb-lovin’ body (I fit into this category).
Plus, carbohydrates are needed for hormone production, and this is especially important for women during perimenopause. I’ve found its women in their 40s and 50s that are most commonly on a low-carb diet to stave off any hormone-induced weight gain…but that can cause a whole host of other problems.
What’s important isn’t to vilify any macronutrient, it’s to find balance. The best way to find balance is to bring in whole food versions of healthy fats, carbs, and protein, and let your body guide you to your perfect balance (more on that in an upcoming post :)
One last thing…
Dear protein, you’ve been shining your golden halo for many decades now…but don’t get too comfortable. Your time is coming. If history tells us anything, it won’t be too long before you’re thrown under the bus, just like carbs have been for the last 10 – 20 years. It’s just how food fashion goes, each macronutrient is vilified at a time, and it’s been almost 100 years since it was last your turn.
3. Seems too good to be true
If the promoters of a diet say things like “drop 10 pounds or more in 2 weeks” or “reverse all of your health conditions overnight”, then run far, far away.
Before you embark on a crash fad diet, you need to know one important thing - fast weight loss is almost always water weight.
Low carb diets trigger a huge release of water, but the moment a little bit of something sweet passes your lips, all of that water will come right back.
(And that’s good, you were probably dehydrated on a cellular level without that water).
If it’s not water weight, then it’s usually muscle loss…fat loss takes some time. Losing muscle means your metabolism might slow down and you’re guaranteed to gain back that lost muscle as fat unless you’re doing heavy muscle training.
Most importantly, and sadly, losing weight and then gaining it back (which happens to 80% to 95% of dieters) is much harder on the body than just staying where you are. Plus, rapid weight loss increases the hunger hormone ghrelin, which can make your hunger feel insatiable. Boo!
Keep your muscle and water where it is, slow and steady permanent weight loss is the healthiest way.
4. Trades meals for supplements
(or the diet involves a product/supplement upsell)
You might think that the Slim Fast days of the 1980s & 1990s are over, but the idea of drinking a shake for 2 meals a day is still alive and well.
New meal replacement products are, for the most part, better quality than what we had 30 years ago, but the idea is the same. While this can trigger weight loss for a while (as any super low-calorie diet will), no one can live for the rest of their lives eating this way.
So…whatever weight is loss comes right back. Think of it as boomerang weight loss.
5. Promotes a Low calorie diet (under 2000 cal)
(and they don’t tell you that this can slooooow down your metabolism)
Our body’s metabolism is like a furnace that’s powered by the food we eat. If we stoke the fire regularly, then it burns brightly. But if we regularly limit how much food we eat then our inner furnace has to learn how to function with less and it responds in the only way it can, it dims the fire and slows down our whole system.
Research has found that low-calorie diets slow our metabolism while we’re following it…and even when we stop. Some studies have found that a low-calorie diet can cause our body to burn up to 23% fewer calories in a day!
Yikes! Your body now needs ¼ less food…but, since low calorie diets can make us hungrier than this is really hard to accomplish.
This leads to enormous food guilt. And a lot of should’s. I should be able to eat less. I shouldn’t be so hungry all the time. I should be able to control my eating better.
No, you can’t! It’s impossible when your body is working against those efforts!!
Your body loves you exactly as you are right now and gets really worried and stressed out on a low-calorie diet. The slowing down of your metabolism and your increased appetite is your body’s way of finding balance.
It’s that fad diet that was the problem – NOT YOU! You didn’t do anything wrong, other than following some dieting advice with the very best of intentions.
I want to expose these dieting truths because it’s time we bring back some body love. Our body is absolutely amazing, and it IS possible to feel healthier AND eat in a way that makes your body happy.
And that truth lies within you, we just need to uncover it <3
The weight loss industry is a $150 billion industry, and it’s these profits that drive our incredibly unhealthy dieting culture. But, we can walk off this dieting treadmill anytime…including right now.
The dieting culture doesn’t want us to know how to eat for ourselves, it wants us to be reliant on their ever-changing campaign of “perfect” dieting ideas.
Moving away from dieting takes some inner work and outer work. Dieting ideals are usually ingrained so deeply inside our own heads, that it can take some time to find that mean inner voice and learn to quiet it.
But it IS possible. And today is a great time to start :). Welcome to Undieting <3.
What is your experience with dieting? Tell me all about the craziest fad diet you’ve been on in the comments below.
Want to know more about Undieting? Grab a copy of my new book; Undieting - Freedom From the Bewildering World of Fad Diets.
