2885: Why Dieting Never Works: 4 Reasons to Stop by Jenn Hand with Tiny Buddha

[00:00:00] Überlass deine gesunde Ernährung und die Gains nicht nur deinem Bauchgefühl. Denn bei der Ernährung gaukelt uns unser innerer Schweinehund manchmal ganz schön was vor. Sag stattdessen Hallo zu deinem neuen Coach, Yasio. Yasio ist die meistgenutzte Ernährungs-App Europas, made in Germany. Egal ob Massephase oder ein bisschen Abnehmen, tracke Kalorien, Proteine, Carbs, Fette, Bewegung und Intervallfasten. Und mit den Tasty-Rezepten bist du ready für deine Ziele. Let's go! Lade die Yasio-App jetzt herunter.

[00:00:30] This is Optimal Health Daily. Why Dieting Never Works. 4 Reasons to Stop by Jenn Hand with tinybuddha.com. And I'm Dr. Neal, your very own host and narrator. Welcome back to Optimal Health Daily, where I read to you from some of the most popular health and fitness blogs out there, with permission from the websites, and always with a bit of my commentary at the end. Alright, and with that, let's get right to today's post as we optimize your life.

[00:01:01] Why Dieting Never Works. 4 Reasons to Stop by Jenn Hand with tinybuddha.com. Quote, Your body is precious. It is your vehicle for awakening. Treat it with care. Buddha. Diets are extremely seductive. We get lured in by the promises they make. The temptation of a smaller jean size. The possibility of having a beach-ready body.

[00:01:27] The idea that everything would be better if you just weighed 10 or 15 or 20 pounds less. When you've overloaded yourself with sweets and feel horrible about your body, it's easy to get sucked into attempting a diet as a quick fix to your weight issues. In my own life, I struggled with gaining and losing the same 60 pounds for about 12 years. I would start over on Monday, swear off sweets and dessert, and then be knee-deep in a gallon of ice cream by Friday.

[00:01:55] If there was a diet out there, I tried it. Cleanses. Detoxes. Paleo. South Beach. Atkins. The Zone Diet. Weight Watchers. And even diet pills. Even though I was continually seduced by the promise of weight loss, I never kept it off. I would inevitably end up failing miserably, but would still be seduced by the promise of, well, next time I'll really stick with it.

[00:02:21] So when you're seduced by the promise of weight loss and tempted to start another diet, let me save you weeks of frustration and tears with what I learned in my 12 years of dieting. Here's why another diet is never the answer. Diets fail 100% of the time. Diets fail because there is an on and an off. If you go on something, at some point in time you have to go off of it. Yes, you may lose weight initially.

[00:02:50] You may drop a size or two from not eating carbs, but in 6 months, a year, or 5 years, has the weight come back? No one can sustain the I'm eating only fruits, vegetables, and chicken diet forever. When you rigidly restrict what you eat, eventually you'll get to a point where you give in. This inevitably leads to a slippery downhill slope of overeating and then starting over the next day. Diets are never successful long term.

[00:03:18] Failure is built into the very nature of a diet. When you start a food plan, something will come up where you'll desperately want something not on your diet, and then you feel like a failure because you broke the diet. Diets always measure success in days, weeks, or months, because the reality is it never lasts long term. Diets set you up to crave even more sweets. When you tell a toddler they can't have the green crayon, what do they immediately want?

[00:03:47] The green crayon. They throw a temper tantrum if you won't give them the green crayon. After a while, you get so sick of them screaming about the crayon that you give it to them so they'll stop their tantrum. And so it is with dieting. You tell yourself you can't have cake, cookies, bread, or chocolate. So what do you think about all day long? The cakes, cookies, bread, and chocolate. You're consumed with it, you dream about it, and you fantasize about ways you can eat one piece of cake without having it count.

[00:04:17] Your forbidden foods seem to be consuming your thoughts, and soon, you're so sick of fighting an internal battle and thinking about cakes and cookies 24-7 that you give in, so all of the fighting stops. The nature of something being forbidden means you're much more likely to want, need, and crave it. Diets take you further and further away from learning to listen to your body. Diets work in direct opposition to intuitive eating.

[00:04:44] They're based on strict rules and foods you can't eat. There isn't room to check in with your body, allow your needs and wants to arise, and nourish your body accordingly. Success is based on adhering to a system that's prescribed. If there are rules you have to abide by, you can bet that the diet does not encourage listening to your body. Instead of learning how to tap into your body's own intuition, you only eat what's on the list of acceptable foods. Lasting weight loss requires that you are in touch with your body,

[00:05:14] that you understand what it needs and wants, and that you pay enough attention to yourself that you are aware of how and why you use food. And when you diet, it takes you farther away from listening to your own body's wisdom. Diets create a sense of separation from yourself. Because diets operate on strict rules and guidelines, it creates a sense of separation from your body. Your body becomes this thing that you're fighting against. You wage war on it, you deprive it,

[00:05:43] and you punish it. The sense of separation grows as you work against your body, attempting to punish it into a place of weight loss. A diet is essentially a battle with yourself, and the more you diet, the more the distance you create between you and your body. The way back to hearing your body's messages is through listening, honoring, and nourishing yourself, which dieting will never do for you. Remember that dieting never brings about the results you truly want.

[00:06:11] Lasting change begins with awareness, love, and self-compassion as you start to understand your food patterns and behaviors. You just listened to the post titled, Why Dieting Never Works, 4 Reasons to Stop, by Jen Hand, with tinybuddha.com, and I'll be right back with my commentary. Dr. Neil here for my commentary. Now, on the surface, we may wonder whether self-compassion

[00:06:41] really helps with weight loss and weight management. I mean, it seems to go against conventional thinking about losing weight, right? To lose weight, we need to restrict ourselves somewhat. We need to reduce our intake of things we might enjoy and increase our levels of discomfort by moving our bodies in ways we may not always enjoy. Plus, we may experience feelings of shame and stress for not meeting our body weight goals. So, how can self-compassion possibly fit into this? Well,

[00:07:10] studies have looked at how self-compassion may help with weight loss and weight management, and sure enough, found that self-compassion can coexist with all of these other things. Self-compassion is all about forgiving ourselves when we may have a lapse in our behaviors or getting through those seemingly endless plateaus in our progress. In fact, a published meta-analysis found that when people practiced self-compassion when trying to lose weight,

[00:07:38] they tended to have healthier habits and experienced more weight loss. And these healthier eating habits and weight loss didn't just happen over the short term, but tended to stick over the longer term. So, the authors concluded that self-compassion can be useful for weight loss. If we've spent too much time being hard on ourselves for not reaching a specific goal we've set, why not try self-compassion instead? All right, that'll do it for today. Thank you so much for listening

[00:08:08] and being a subscriber or follower of the show. I hope you have a great rest of your day and I'll see you back here tomorrow where your optimal life awaits.