Diets fail the vast majority of people who go on them. It is said that ninety five percent of people who go on diets fail in the end. That figure may be off by a little bit, but it is close to being accurate. Diets fail most people simply because they are temporary in nature or a foolish gimmick in the first place. If you want to succeed at weight loss, and keep it off afterwards, you must get out of the dieters mindset. The mindset of getting through a diet is a fools errand, which will only frustrate you in the end. Having a dieters mindset only serves to set yourself up for failure every time you attempt to lose weight. Diets will almost always fail you!
You have to make a lifestyle change!
If you are sincere about wanting to successfully lose weight, you have to change your nutritional lifestyle. Let’s face facts, it was a poor nutritional lifestyle that got you over weight in the first place. Only a healthy nutritional lifestyle is going to remove and keep those unwanted pounds off of you for life. Intelligent arguments against this point cannot be made even by the smartest among us. If you are genetically prone to being overweight, you are going to regain your weight if you start eating unhealthy food again. This is a simple truth which is meant to inform, not to offend. Diets fail us. Only through a true change of lifestyle can success be found.
Do not let the crabs pull you back down!
Have you ever heard the old maxim that life is like being in a bucket of crabs? The harder you try to climb out of the bucket, the harder the crabs try to pull you back down. This maxim is particularly true for those of us with weight problems. Family and friends often unwittingly sabotage us by coaxing us to eat unhealthy foods with them. Most of us have, or will experience this. When we encounter the crabs, we must remain resilient and strong against them lest they pull us back down.
The crabs can be found everywhere!
There is a popular influencer on Instagram who began as a fitness model. This woman now spends her days talking people into accepting their unhealthy bodies. I get that we are more than our appearances, but this is a health issue and not one of vanity. When we become overweight, we are setting ourselves up for future health problems. You can be pretty or handsome when overweight. Overweight people can have many talents that help others live better. The problem with being overweight is a health issue. Only shallow minded individuals believe otherwise.
Knowing that diets fail so many is why I created this website. I believe this particular Instagram influencer has never actually made a lifestyle change which is why she is obviously angry now. She has now become a popular crab trying her best to pull others back into her bucket for company.
Here is some of this woman’s advice which I will debunk:
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Honor your hunger. Dieting distances us from trusting our bodies, so you might lack trust in your body’s cues at first.
- I will agree that we need to honor our body’s hunger, we should never go around hungry. Going around hungry though is not a problem when you only nourish it with wholesome foods that are not full of added sugars, unhealthy fats, preservatives, and other unhealthy ingredients. The problem of eating when you are hungry is this hunger is often driven by dehydration, stress, boredom or cravings for simple carbohydrates. Before you begin eating a snack, you should check yourself for actual hunger.
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Explore your emotions with kindness. Emotional eating is one of the many coping mechanisms you might have, and there is nothing wrong with it.
- Some our strongest cravings to eat are when we are hurting emotionally. How many of you ever sat down and thought about having a healthy snack when you were hurting? You would be a rarity if this is your first consideration. If we are to be intellectually honest, when we are emotional, we are reaching for sweet or salty foods that release our feel good endorphins. Emotional eating is eating as a way to suppress or soothe negative emotions, such as stress, anger, fear, boredom, sadness and loneliness. Major life events or, more commonly, the hassles of daily life can trigger negative emotions that lead to emotional eating and disrupt your weight-loss efforts.
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Question your assumptions about eating a particular food. For example, if you thought “I don’t need that donut”. maybe by eating the donut you will actually be satisfied and not be haunted by the craving.
- This kind of thinking right here is exactly why there is such a high rate of recidivism with weight gain. If you had no control over eating certain unhealthy foods before your weight loss, it is foolish to believe you will have control once you hit your goal weight. For we who have weight control problems, adding unhealthy foods back into our lifestyle will cause us to relapse back into obesity.
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Putting fears and thoughts into context. The most common thing I hear is “if I start eating forbidden foods then I won’t be able to stop!” This is a common fear with someone who has a history of chronic dieting and/or food deprivation. Dieters or people with strict eating rules typically have not experienced food habituation.
- This kind of thinking is exactly why people fail at dieting! Healthy foods do not make you overweight unless you are eating beyond your caloric needs. Being intellectually honest, no one is forbidding themselves from eating healthy foods. Forbidden foods are foods that are full of sugar, unhealthy fats, salt and preservatives. There is a link between carb addiction and alcoholism. Is it ever alright for a recovering alcoholic to ever indulge in alcohol again? From Addiction Center: There is a surprising genetic link between children of parents who abuse alcohol and their sugar addiction. A recent study confirmed dopamine receptors in the brain light up when we consume sugar, similarly to the receptors lighting up in the brain of someone who abuses alcohol. This can encourage people who struggle with sweets into alcoholism or moderate alcohol consumption.Alcohol-dependent individuals have a higher preference for sweets and experience sugar cravings and sugar withdrawals. The genes in parents who abuse alcohol, as well as their preference for sugar, gets passed down to their children. As a result, the child now has a predisposition to both of these compulsions. (1)
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Remove all judgment about your eating choices. You are not good or bad based on what you eat. Your values and personhood don’t take a dive because you ate cake.
- Diets fail because people too often do not look at it from a health perspective. They sometimes feel there is a judgment being made about their appearance or character when they eat unhealthy foods. It would be absurd to not acknowledge there are shallow people among us who do judge like this, but these cretins judge everything in a negative light. Your values and personhood are only going to become a loved ones memory if you succumb to a illness brought on by unhealthy eating habits. Would you rather be a memory, or a healthy part of your loved ones lives? We want you to be healthy in order for your values and personhood to be among us because you are valued. You have great value no matter your size, but having value does not make one healthy!
Check out our plan here at David’s Way to Health and Fitness. It is not complicated at all and is really nothing more than a common sense approach to nutrition. I guarantee that anyone who tries our methodology will lose weight, and then keep it off. Best of all, we charge nothing to anyone to follow our methodology, we are entirely free to all.
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