Nowadays we live in a diet culture that has a new ‘trendy’ diet every month promising it will change your life and make you lose weight quickly. But have you ever thought about what would happen if you just stop trying to diet and just eat whatever your body wants? As scary as it may sound, with time you can make it a habit to make better food choices that will nourish your body and make you feel like the best version of yourself. You can learn to turn off the eating autopilot and shut off the food police you have inside your head and start thinking about WHY you are eating and be consciously aware before, during and after every meal.
So, how can you identify if you are leading yourself into another diet, even if it is advertised as ‘healthy eating’ or ‘wellness’? Check out the following warning signs that your ‘lifestyle’ is a wolf in sheep’s clothing:
- It promises quick weight loss
- It categorizes food as ‘good’, ‘bad’ or ‘forbidden’
- It has food rules
- It makes you feel like you have no willpower, stressed, ashamed of your body and ends up in you binging or overeating (when you diet you are setting yourself up to fail as humans will physiologically crave what they cannot have)
- The recommendations you see are based on one research study (sometimes animal studies) and studies that ignore individual differences
If you want to start changing the way you perceive food, start becoming familiar with the concepts of ‘Intuitive Eating’ and ‘Mindful Eating’. It is all about making baby steps and setting small achievable goals that are realistic within YOUR lifestyle. You will at some point ‘fall off the wagon’ and it is completely normal and even encouraged during this process — the most important aspect is how you deal with the situation – does it make you learn why it happened for future growth or does it destroy all the progress you have made? Striving for ‘perfect eating’ (whatever that means) all the time might actually lead to disordered eating.
Often times we see how specific foods are either glorified or vilified but one food will not change your health by itself — it is the combination of habits that matter when you look at the big picture (eating highly nutritious foods, exercising, drinking enough fluids, sleeping, managing stress…). Remember, food is not meant to make you feel guilty but to be enjoyed and savored. Start working on reframing your thoughts to become a happier and healthier version of yourself.