Lose weight...without counting or deprivation
After many months of self-isolation, many of us (myself included) are feeling a tad more soft and squishy than a few months ago.
The trouble is, what we’ve been “trained” to do whenever the scale goes up by the dieting culture only makes matters worse, not better. (And, for the record, we’ve also been trained by the dieting culture to fear a certain number on the scale.)
Google “weight loss” and you’ll quickly fall down a rabbit hole of dieting “solutions” that all try to sell themselves as the easiest and fastest solution.
As a nutritionist, my professional opinion is that they’re all full of s**t. I’ve worked with thousands of people and I’ve never seen an example of a diet working for the long-term, and there’s lots of research to back me up on this.
As many as 95% of dieters will gain back everything they’ve lost, making most diets a very futile effort. It isn’t better for serial dieters; in a study that followed 19,000 men, the best indicator that a participant would gain weight back was that he’d been on a diet before participating in the study.
I’m not telling you this to cause you any frustration, I hope to convince you not to try them in the first place. It’s not worth the work and your body wants nothing to do with it.
There’s a better, easier option
Your body wants you to be healthy, energetic, and feel great. And, it already knows what to do…but you’ve got to tune in and listen. And that, my friend, can be the hardest part.
But – this is method isn’t fast. Your body does NOT like fast weight loss.
Anytime you greatly diminish your energy input (eat less), your body will go into preservation mode. Your body will reduce the amount of energy you expend by slooowing down your metabolism. Research has found that this slow down isn’t temporary, it can last for months or years after you’ve started eating normally again.
Plus, to make matters worse, your body will encourage you to eat more by increasing the hunger hormone ghrelin. This means you’re much hungrier than you were before starting that diet, making it almost impossible to stay on the diet. This makes “falling off the wagon” inevitable.
Let me make this clear - YOU didn’t do anything wrong!
We all tend to blame ourselves when we fall back into our normal ways of eating. BUT! The diet you tried was doomed to fail right from the start. Your whole body was screaming “STOP!! Please please please start eating normally again!”. And the longer you manage to stay on that diet, the louder your body will get.
EVERY SINGLE DIET will fail eventually. That’s why the only answer is undieting.
What is Undieting?
Undieting is a slow, healthy process of tuning into your body’s wisdom to find the balance of healthy whole food that fuels your body perfectly.
There’s no counting, measuring, denying, or deprivation. None.
It also involves a few little tricks, because your brain is powerful and can get in the way sometimes.
One milkshake, two different reactions –
Alia Crum, Assistant Professor at Stanford University posed a very interesting question – how much does a food label affect how we respond to a food?
She has done a lot of research on the placebo effect and wondered if food labels act in the same way. She wanted to know if we believe food is high calorie, does that change how our body reacts to it?
Specifically, if you believe you had a high calorie “indulgent” shake, will your body respond differently than if you believed you had a “diet” shake? Does the placebo effect work with food?
She invited a group of people for breakfast two Mondays in a row. The lucky participants were being served a milkshake for breakfast.
The first Monday they were given an “Indulgent” shake, and they were told it was a whopping 640 calories, high fat, and high sugar. The second Monday they were served a “Sensible” shake, only 140 calories and no fat and no added sugar. They all enjoyed the shakes and were asked how full they felt.
Unsurprisingly, the group felt much more satisfied after the indulgent shake. And, their blood work agreed. The hunger hormone ghrelin went down 3x more after the “Indulgent” shake vs. the “Sensible” shake.
The interesting thing was – both shakes were exactly the same 300-calorie shake.
If the shakes were the same…why did their blood levels of ghrelin change when they thought they were enjoying a higher calorie shake???
That’s because - your belief about a food changes your physiological reaction to it!
This means that your body will feel more satisfied after having a piece of cake that feels indulgent than over a meal or food that advertises that it’s “diet”…even if the calorie count is exactly the same.
Your belief changes how your body reacts!
It’s just another bit of proof that there’s so much more to how your body responds to food than just calories in vs. calories out.
The answer is Undieting
The dieting culture has a theme running through every different diet; “Hijack your preferences and follow this new way of eating. This is the only way to be healthy.”
But, what we’ve seen is that the body pushes back when our calorie intake is low AND our body reacts differently physiologically when we believe we’re eating a “diet” meal.
To me, that sounds like a pretty dire lose/lose situation.
And that’s where Undieting shines – instead of trying to use willpower to push through your body’s wants and needs, you tap into them. There’s so much magic when you listen to what your body is looking for.
Your body wants to be healthy as much as you want to be healthy. Your body wants to move freely and easily, without extra weight holding it down.
Your body is your ally, not your enemy. THIS is the power of Undieting.
If you’d like some help undieting, inside my nutrition hub, Your Beautiful Life, I’ve created a full masterclass tackling this question – how can I lose weight without counting, weighing, or depriving myself? Join today and get immediate access!