diet

How many weight loss diet ‘boyfriends’ or ‘girlfriends’ have you hooked up with over the years? Two? Three? Ten or more? Maybe you’ve only hooked up with the one diet but you’ve been on and off over the years, still feeling frustrated at your lack of commitment… Is it a lack of commitment…? Or something else?

Have you had enough of trying to stick to all the different ‘rules’ these weight loss diets enforce on your life?

Do they stop you enjoying social occasions? Do they leave you feeling tired and lethargic by the end of the day? Are you grumpy or snappy by dinner time because they’ve left you feeling starving?

Do they cut certain foods out of your life and then make you feel guilty when you ‘cheat’ by eating them?

These kind of relationships are the ones your mum told you stay away from. They promise the world, but only ever deliver pain and frustration.

Yes, you may feel good at first, it’s a common story. But as the weeks go on, you find yourself feeling less and less fulfilled. Even as the numbers on the scales change, you realise that although it’s helping you reach your goal, you feel empty, miserable and listless. Motivation wanes, even despite the results.

It doesn’t take long before cracks in the relationship start to appear. A small chocolate here, a chip or 2 there.

Then it happens. You’re home alone on the couch one night and you remember the Tim Tams (or cheese and crackers for the savoury people) that your housemate brought home yesterday. Oh yum. The temptation is strong. You fight to maintain your loyalty, but you’ve really had enough. One little cheat won’t hurt.

Before you know it you’re throwing an empty biscuit packet in the bin wondering what happened. You feel sick. Oh well, you’ll just eat what you want now and then start back on your diet on Monday.

If this is a familiar scenario in your life, then it’s time to break up with dieting once and for all and build a relationship with life long good nutrition.

Here’s a few reasons why the passion of a diet won’t last and why sensible, balanced eating will give you the health and wellbeing you so deeply desire.

Good nutrition is not about ‘you can’t eat this’…

…it’s a balance that you’ve decided for yourself that promotes both good health in your body and enjoyment and participation in your life.

Chocolate SoufflesMany restrictive diets leave people feeling unmotivated because they’re socially isolating. Eating out with friends, going to a restaurant or attending work functions generally means the presence of food that is more difficult to control. Many successful dieters are so, because they’ve avoided these situations altogether. The problem is that this is generally unsustainable and people miss the interaction. Because they haven’t learnt to manage social occasions, when the diet ends they go back to old habits, and the weight goes back on.

Also, when you restrict foods, put ‘rules’ around your food and start saying things like “I’m eating good today” or “I ate an evil cheesecake today”, you’re setting yourself up for feeling lots of unnecessary guilt. Food has no moral value, it’s not right or wrong.

Yes, some foods may offer more nutrition than others, but you can’t get too caught up with food’s nutritional ranking. Yes, it’s good to understand what are the healthier choices, but you must remember that all food is different.

For example, broccoli has more nutrition overall than a cucumber but this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t eat cucumber. Milk has more calcium than lamb, but lamb has an iron content that milk could never compete with. One is not better than the other, because they shouldn’t be compared. Potato chips offer little in the area of vitamins and minerals, but a handful on occasions is not ‘bad’, ‘evil’ or something you need to feel guilty about. It’s just food.

Learn to find the balance thats right for you so you can enjoy yourself and the foods you love, but keep your body healthy at the same time.

I’d like to suggest that losing weight in the same way you intend on maintaining it is the best way to go.

Long term good nutrition is where the health benefits are…

Food constantly goes in and then after some digestion goes out again. In particular, many vitamins and antioxidants are not stored by the body and need to be eaten regularly. Successful excess fat loss only occurs when you consistently create a energy deficit over the long term, not just on certain days and weeks. If you’re constantly on and off the diet, you’re never giving your body consistent deficit, consistent healthy food or a consistent routine.

One day you’re restricting yourself and the next day you’re binging or overeating. Where’s middle ground?

Imagine if being a healthy eater was something you could sustain each day for your whole life?

Imagine how much energy you’d have, how good your body would feel and how much your mood would improve! In many cases, you’ll also view your body more positively too, even if it doesn’t change much. I believe that the act of eating well (based on good advice) actually improves people’s personal view of themselves far more than the loss of kilos on the scales.

I’d like to suggest that you follow a healthy eating pattern that doesn’t leave you hungry, is easy to follow and that you can stick to indefinitely. This way you won’t swing between the two extremes of being ‘on a diet’ and then the next day having no control over your eating habits at all.

Good nutrition involves variety…

One thing that research shows us is that due to our vast genetic diversity and the fact that humans have survived all over the world in different environments for thousands of years, is that our bodies have the incredible ability to survive on just about anything! There are no black and white rules. Nutrition advice is very grey. What seems to be most beneficial to our health is a wide variety of food and eating it in its whole or minimally processed state.

I believe that it’s worth having a basic idea about nutrients (fats, carbs, sugars, proteins, etc) but I don’t believe that they should be demonised or exalted in isolation. We eat food, not nutrients and so it’s important to look at the food as a whole, rather than focus too narrowly.

Vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, grains, legumes, meat, poultry, fish, diary and eggs are all highly nutritious foods and unless you have an allergy or an autoimmune disease there’s no reason to cut any of them out. In fact, these foods are only a segment of all the different foods that are eaten around the globe. Insects anyone?

In the end, what’s right for one person may not be right for another. Get individual advice thats right for you. Sometimes figuring out what you should eat takes some trial and error but there are some good guidelines to follow to find out whether the advice you’re receiving is right for you:

  • you shouldn’t be starving all the time
  • you shouldn’t be craving sugar all the time
  • you shouldn’t need to rely on supplements or meal replacements
  • you shouldn’t feel overly tired or lethargic

If weight loss is on your ‘to do’ list this year, I encourage you, as your friendly neighbourhood nutritionist, to breakup with the diet once and for all. Delete their number, throw away their stuff and block their Facebook profile. Hook up with life long good nutrition and start enjoying your food, not fearing it!