I’m a dietitian, who doesn’t promote diets. Weird, huh?! All I can think of is, “I’m not a regular mom, I’m a cool mom!” But really. If you come to see me, we’ll probably talk about loosening restrictions on your eating and having MORE cupcakes, cookies, or pizza.
Most people I work with have a dieting history that has made them feel so out of control with food they avoid entire food groups, which sucks the fun and normalcy out of life.
What’s a birthday without birthday cake? Why give up ice cream on a warm summer night with your friends?
Stressing about food is not healthy. And diets are a surefire way to make us stress about food.
You may feel like dieting will HELP your relationship with food, health and your body, but it most often does the opposite.
I think deep down people know this, but the idea of dieting is so alluring, accepted and almost addicting. It makes such false promises that are hard NOT to believe. “YOU’LL BE HAPPY WHEN ________” but when never comes because you’re so miserable on the diet or restriction that it sucks the fun out of life, so when does the happiness come?
And then let’s just say you do lose weight on said diet/restriction plan. But the process to get there involved a lot of restriction and misery, well, the story would go you must continue that miserable process of restriction to stay at that weight.
Dieting gives us a feeling of “control” like we’re “doing something.” That rigid structure can be very alluring and even addicting when we’re not feeling so great in life. Plus, everyone else is doing it, so shouldn’t we? What’s the harm?
Well, if we’re already feeling shitty, add a sh*tload of rigid food rules and stress on top of it and you’ll likely feel a lot worse. PLUS will likely end up feeling weird about food and may even be scared to eat bananas. I don’t know who needs to hear this but being afraid to eat food is not healthy.
Rather than a quick, superficial, band-aid fix that will bring you FURTHER from yourself, what if you just held space for that desire and dug a little deeper to ask yourself some other questions first?
Curious about a non-diet approach to health, wellness, and nutrition? Book a free intro call with me below and let’s chat!
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