The Problem with Diets [Ep. 82]

This is to eat well, think. Well live well podcast. I'm Lisa Salsbury. And this is episode 82. The problem with diets. Welcome to Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well; the podcast for women who want to lose weight, but are tired of counting and calculating all the food. I'm your host, Lisa Salsbury. I'm a certified health and weight loss coach and life coach, and most importantly a recovered chronic dieter. I'll teach you to figure out why you are eating when you aren't hungry, instead of worrying so much about what you are eating. Hello, welcome back to the eat. Well, think. Well live well podcast. I have been thinking about diets lately. Dieting. What does that word mean? I'm on a diet. That means you're trying to lose weight intentionally. Right? In fact, Webster's dictionary defines the phrase on a diet. As eating less food or only particular kinds of food in order to lose weight. So that's not a surprise. That's what everyone would call it. Right. But if you look up just the word diet, not the phrase, but just the word diet, you get an altogether different definition. The first thing it says is food and drink regularly provided or consumed. The next one is habitual nourishment. This is just the stuff that we're eating. Day in and day out. That's your diet. It also can be the kind and amount of food prescribed for a person or animal for a special reason. So for example, put the example of the dictionary gives is they were put on a low sodium diet. Um, don't do that by the way. Uh, sodium's not a problem, but. This is interesting because it brings up the fact that there are lots of reasons. For eating a particular way that have nothing to do with weight loss. You may need to avoid a food due to an allergy. I have a friend who is Ciliac she's on a gluten-free diet. It's not because she wants to lose weight or because she thinks gluten is the devil. It just doesn't work for her body. Right. So you may. Be on a low fiber diet in preparation for a colonoscopy. That's fun. Right? So there's lots of reasons that you change what you're eating. For a special reason that doesn't have anything to do with weight loss. But the last definition in the dictionary online is a regimen of eating and drinking sparingly. So as to reduce one's weight, going on a diet. So how can we switch up our language so that when we are referring to the word diet, We are just meeting those first definitions. The food and drink regularly consumed our habitual nutrition. And then how can we also just remove the negative connotation associated with using that regularly consumed food to reduce one's weight? Because when we say we're on a diet, it does have a different feeling, right. We feel. Probably a little negative about that because of our past experience. But there are so many reasons my clients give for wanting to reduce their scale weight. And here's the thing. All the reasons are good reasons. I don't judge or tell them they need to have a better reason. There is no better reason you can just come to me and say, I want to, that's a good reason. I really don't care. You can just want to. But here's some of the reasons my clients give some are purely for aesthetics. That's okay. I want to look better naked. Great. Summer for joint reasons. They want to reduce pressure on their back or knees. Interestingly, a study published in arthritis and rheumatism. Of overweight and obese adults with knee osteoarthritis found that losing one pound of weight resulted in four pounds of pressure being removed from the knees. In other words, losing just 10 pounds would relieve 40 pounds of pressure from your knees. That's crazy. So yeah, it does work. If your knees are hurting and you are obese or overweight. it could really help you, this, this study found that it could really help to reduce some of that pressure. So that's a good reason. Um, some want to lose weight because they notice it's affecting their overall blood chemistry, specifically running up against like diabetes heart disease, stroke risk. The truth is that studies show an increase in all cause mortality for individuals who are overweight and or obese, I find this tends to be the most common reason. Longevity. My clients tell me I want to be healthy. And why do you want to be healthy? Because I want to live longer and I want to live better while I'm living longer. They don't just want to live a long life. They want their health span to match their lifespan. They want to be as healthy as they can be for as long as possible in their life. So let's talk a little more about diets. Versus my approach to helping you lose weight. You can kind of figure out what my approach is by all of my podcasts collectively, but mostly the way I teach, just to break it down. We plan our meals. We use our higher brains to make our food decisions. We eat according to the hunger scale. And we listen to our emotions such that we process those instead of always giving into our cravings. To manage those emotions. That's kind of like a quick and dirty way to explain my approach, but there's much, much, much more to it. Lots of tools and techniques that I use. But here are the four problems I noticed with standard or typical diets. Number one. They are short term. This is probably the biggest problem. I not even probably this is the biggest problem. They aim to change you for a length of time, not your whole life. So there are several issues here. First, this puts you in a, a lot of resistance. You are using tons of willpower just to make it through the diet. You probably aren't allowing any craving emotions to be present and sit with them. You're just pushing it down. And thinking if I can just make it to day 31 or day 76 or through these six weeks, then I can have the cupcake. I get why people do these short-term things. They work. And they can work fast to reduce your scale weight so they can be appealing in that way. And I am more than guilty of doing this back in my dieting days. They just don't end up teaching you anything, except maybe that you're good or not. Good. At willpower. You likely are not improving your health in any lasting way, especially if you go back to eating the way you originally had been eating and in the quantities you used to eat. With an approach like mine, you don't see a lot of change in the first few weeks. You are gradually learning a new way of eating and approaching food. With a diet UCA, sharp, steep, straight up sort of mountain. You are supposed to be on top of the very first Monday, you start. Whereas with my approach, you're on a slow, steady incline, up to a beautiful plateau. I'm picturing a hike here, like straight up a cliff is kind of what a diet expects you to do. Just like get on board right now. Just get on top of the mountain. Whereas with me, you're going to be gradually changing things until you get to that goal, weight or lifestyle or goal way of eating. Right. You get up to this goal way of eating and you're like, this is what feels amazing for me. And you get up to this beautiful plateau and you think, wait, plateau. That has a terrible negative connotation in weight loss because we use that word to mean that our weight loss has stalled. But if you picture this long hike with lots of ups and downs and small flat areas and just gradual, gradual inclines. When you get to the top. And you can just see forever. That plateau is actually lovely. It's that time where you just are sort of in autopilot mode with your eating and nutrition food, doesn't throw you for a loop anymore. It's not difficult to eat your go-to meals. You might still have scale weight to take off, but you're cruising on this plateau because you feel better up here. You feel better eating the way you've designed your life, and you want to stay up here at this higher plane of eating. Eating. That's a great plateau to beyond. Think of it as that higher plane. Okay. Number two. Problem I have with diets and things. I think that diets have in common. They don't tell you what to do. When you don't feel like doing the thing. Okay. I have had several diet books in my life and several other online diet plans. I've joined bootcamps with exercise classes and associated food lists. I've put my food in little color-coded containers and tried to make it all fit. But when I didn't feel like doing those things when I had a bad day or when I just didn't have any vegetables on hand. Those diets had no solutions for me. I do remember seeing on the biggest loser show, a very obvious product placement for sugar-free gum and the suggestion that that was a good way to keep cravings at bay. I ended up showing so much gum that several years ago, I had to give it up cold Turkey one day. I was getting so much bloating from the xylitol and the brand that I was using. I was starting to have jaw pain. I mean probably 18 pieces a day was too much, but don't judge, this is what happens when I'm like, that's a solution. Great. I was sort of an all or nothing kind of girl back then. But I'm just saying that those diets left me with no way to manage my emotions and a gum addiction. You have got to have strategies. For when things are going wrong. Diets only tell you what to do. Like here's all the actions, here's all your to-do items. Here's how to achieve the goal. But I want to help you figure out what you can do when you have a super crappy day. And it seems like ordering super greasy takeout is the only solution when your emotions are running high. How do you eat? What's planned? How do you keep food from being the only solution? That's what diets don't help you with? They just say things. Like you can do anything for 75 days. That's not helpful. That's just willpower and you haven't learned anything except how to suffer. You don't actually have to suffer. You can learn to feel through these cravings. You can learn to feel your crappy emotions in ways that feel healing. Rather than eating through them. The other thing is I actually do an obstacles and strategies activity with all my clients. And I have them tell me all the ways that this isn't going to work. We list out all the reasons their brains are like, oh, Here, adorable thinking you're going to lose weight. Let me offer up all the ways you failed in the past. And then we actually come up with solutions to those. I did a whole episode on this last year in advance of new year's resolutions it's episode 23. And I'll put the link in the show notes. If you're interested in diving into that concept more. But ultimately. No diet program ever tells you what to do. When you're not in the mood. But I do. All right. Number three. Diets just want to fix what's wrong with you. Listen up, stop asking what's wrong with me. Nothing. Nothing is wrong with you. When I learned this. I healed. A lot. A lot, like with my body, with the way I related to my body, especially the way I thought about my body. You are whole and good and beautiful. There doesn't have to be anything wrong with you. To want to change your eating habits. It's okay. That sometimes you overeat because you're sad. It's okay. That in the past, you've not paid any attention to your hunger. These things are just actions. They don't mean you are or we're a bad person. I think in my dieting days, I wanted to find something that was physically wrong with me. That could be fixed, like an infection that could be cured with an antibiotic. I thought maybe I have a fibroid problem, or maybe my metabolism is broken or maybe I'm in starvation mode. Diets give you all these problems that you might have, and then they tell you. They have the solution. The fast majority of us are just taking in more food than our bodies need. That's it. There's nothing wrong with you. It's just a bit too much food. Now, obviously some of you do have underlying medical conditions and for sure, see a doctor, this isn't medical advice. I'm just saying the vast majority of us. Need to examine our intake. We need to examine the content of our food. Are we balancing our intake, such that we are getting protein, fiber and fat at each meal? And addressing things like if you are in midlife, are you cognizant of your hormones? Are you asking your doctor about hormone replacement therapy and seeing if you're a candidate for that getting on HRT will not necessarily make you lose weight? But we just want to make sure that we are doing all we can to support our bodies. Through this time. It's not that there's something wrong with you. We need to stop asking that we just want to make sure we're giving our bodies all of the opportunity that we can. For the most part, thinking there was something wrong with me during my dieting days. I was a recipe for disaster. It kept me from seeing real solutions like paying attention to my body. And my hunger cues. It kept me in distrust of my body and kept me looking to outside sources like diet books and apps for the solution. When I believed there was something wrong with my body. I couldn't possibly trust her to give me accurate cues. This was very unhelpful for me. When I started trusting my body more, not only did I also learn to love and appreciate this, the vessel for my soul. But I was better able to trust and listen, and then abide by those cues. Okay. This brings me to my last thought about diets. If you believe that cutting down your food intake equates to a diet. My approach will never be able to help you. We have to stop equating the amount that works best in our body. To being on a diet. Choosing to listen to your body and abide by your hunger scale actually feels amazing when you start really making it part of your everyday practice. You will eventually prefer the feeling of eating just to enough. Instead of overeating. We often feel more secure or like we've had more fun. If we are extra full, we might feel like it feels more correct in our bodies to be full. But as you practice stopping out enough, which is well before full, you will start to realize how much better. Your body can feel on a regular basis. Reduce bloating and cramping reduced digestive symptoms caused by too much food in the system. And so many of my clients tell me they sleep better too. When they eat just two enough. If you are thinking. That any time you have to cut down the amount or the frequency with which you eat, that you are on a diet. Then this approach. Might not work for you. This is a thought though, that we have got to let go. And that's really what I want you to focus in on this. If you are thinking, if I have to cut down my food, I'm on a diet. You've got to change that narrative. That is just not true. I want you to practice thinking. I'm eating the amount of food that works best in my body. This works best for me. And by the way, that will take some trial and error finding that works best for me amount, just eating less at every meal might not actually be what works best for you. As an example, I've noticed lately, I do much better with a larger lunch and a smaller dinner, so I don't really need to cut down my lunch as much as I. Need to cut down my dinner to feel optimal. For some reason, I. tend to want to do the opposite. I want to eat more at dinner time, and I've just noticed lately I've been consistently taking in a little bit, too much food for my body in the evening hours. I generally don't eat after dinner, so I'm not having to stop like late night snacking. But I'm noticing I need to dish up a few bites less at dinner time, and that's been working better for me. I feel better in my body in the evening. I can take my dog on her after dinner walk that she loves so much. Without feeling like the food is sloshing around and I sleep better when I'm not still working on a lot of digestion. So. I have noticed lately I do better with a bigger lunch and sort of a moderate breakfast. And a smaller dinner. So it's not like we need to cut down every single meal. Also, it's very hard to stay satiated when all you are eating is carbohydrates. Not to vilify carbohydrates, but I know when I used to try to cut down my intake and all I was eating was cereal and toast for breakfast and pasta for lunch. It was hard to eat less because those things just went right through me. And I was hungry an hour later. So when we are balancing our plates with protein, fiber, and fat at each meal. You will find that you are able to balance your hunger and your hunger hormones and go for three to five hours in between. Meals. I never really ate enough protein when I was trying to lose weight until I started counting macros and really realized how much protein is in what. You know, I don't want you weighing and measuring your food or counting macros, but if you haven't had that experience in the past and you aren't sure what a serving of protein is, it's not about idea to use Google. To see what that looks like. Just like, if you believe that cutting down your food and Kuwait intake equates to a diet. If you believe that prioritizing protein, fiber, and fat equates to a diet, I, I'm not going to be able to help you. Uh, believing that. That eating in particular ways that work best for your body. If you believe those things sound like a diet, then it's going to be very hard to make these changes. But I, again, I would just encourage you to change that narrative within your own brain and be thinking about foods that work well in your body amounts, that work well in your body. Combinations of foods that work well in your body, such as protein, fiber, and fat. My take home message. Today is for you to remember that losing weight is not just about eating as little as possible. It's eating a little less, just to your enough. And making sure your choices are nutritionally sound 80 to 90% of the time. You don't have to be perfect. And unless you have a medical condition, let's assume your body will respond. Let's assume that there isn't anything wrong with you. And let's be in this for life. We want to create amazing lives, where we aren't completely dependent on food to soothe and manage all our emotions. You can learn to feel emotions without eating through them. I promise if you want this kind of life, this kind of gentle yet doable and sustainable weight loss. Schedule an appointment with me. I've got free coaching calls available to help you understand how coaching can work for you. Linked to that, of course, is in the show notes and as always, thanks for listening to the eat. Well think, well live well podcast.