Welcome to the Simple Steps to Improved Health Challenge Day 17 Don’t Go on a Diet
Reminder to choose 1 of the first two actions to work on this week starting today or whatever day you want the week to start on for you. See Day 1 for more information about the challenge.
How Does Not Going on a Diet Improve Health
If I told you to go on a diet, how would you feel?
You would likely say, “I’ve done that.” or “Nothing works for me.”
Maybe you have successfully gone on many diets but have always gained the weight back and more.
That is because “diets” generally have one purpose, to help you lose weight quickly for an event or activity. Most diets are not sustainable.
Initially, diets were made for athletes. Some would restrict to get underweight for wrestling. Another may eat more protein to add muscle. Others may eat an array of colorful vegetables to get nutrients to fight stress.
Then we started using those diets to lose weight.
So Why Did We Need to use Diets to Lose Weight?
We forgot how to eat for our body. The body has signals to tell you when you are hungry and when you are satisfied. The signals have all gotten missed up based on your specific food journey.
Everyone is an individual with different starts in their nutrition journey. Some were bottle-fed and others breastfed. Childhoods were spent in food deserts where fresh produce was not around and others on farms. Maybe your culture dictated what types of foods you ate.
What country you lived in and what staple foods were promoted in that country were also part of that loss of the signals.
The routines different cultures have for when to eat also caused this conundrum. If your parents worked a 9 to 5 and you went to public school then the routine of eating at specific times would throw off your natural cycle. Add to that the invention of snacking between meals every day. No wonder we are overweight and don’t know why.
We are all different and our bodies react differently to foods.
Why are Diets a Problem?
Diets are generally restrictive and very structured. They need to be so that you get the quick result you are after. The problem is that they can lead to health problems during the diet and after if you go back to eating the previous way and gain the weight back.
Health problems associated with diets include malnutrition, dehydration, and constipation. Additionally, diets can have mental impacts such as headaches and irritability.
Other symptoms can be fatigue, dizziness, and irregularity in menstruation, electrolytes, and gall bladder function.
Some extreme diets also result in muscle and hair loss.
Regaining the weight puts a strain on the heart and adds additional unneeded fat cells.
But I Want to Lose Weight so What do I Do?
Yes, you do. The best way to lose weight and keep it off is through Lifestyle Changes. The best lifestyle changes teach you to listen to your body and make changes in your life that you want to keep forever.
Let me give you an example. If you eat a container of ice cream every day, then moving to a no sugar diet will impact your weight. But once you are done with the diet, you will go back to eating the container of ice cream and gain all the weight back.
In that same example, if you decided to only eat half the container of ice cream each day for a week. The next week maybe eating 2 or 3 scoops every day. After that eating ice cream only half of the days a week and then a couple of days a month.
That creates a lifestyle change that you can live with and not feel deprived of something you enjoy.
How to Take Action to Have a Healthier Lifestyle by Not Going on a Diet
Don’t go on a diet. Decide what you want. Do you want to quickly lose weight and gain it back? Do you want to become a healthier person by modifying your lifestyle?
If your choice is the quick-fix diet that doesn’t last, there are many books and programs out there that do that. Some that may work and then also add some of the mindset changes you need are 131 Method and 21 Day Fix. Both have given me quick weight loss when followed strictly. The problem is they are hard to sustain.
Once you get the weight loss come back here to start the lifestyle changes so you don’t go back to all the habits that gained the weight initially.
Go Do it – Don’t Go on a Diet do a Lifestyle Change
1. The most important question is, “What do you want and why?”
“Why” leads you to what you want to focus on. For example, you want to look good for an upcoming wedding. Maybe you want to be able to do a specific activity without being out of breath. Is it being able to chase your toddler grandchild around the park? Maybe you want long-lasting health and vitality into your 80s and 90s or 100s.
2. Decide where you are willing to make lifestyle changes. There are three areas to make changes. The biggest results to health come from nutrition changes. Next, you can make physical activity changes. The most important part of the process is thought changes because it makes the other two categories of change easier.
3. Choose your change and implement it.
Nutrition change Example: Make half your dinner plate fruits and veggies.
Physical Activity change Example: Do some cardio.
Thought Change Example: “I can’t lose weight and eat chocolate.” Change to “Chocolate can be a part of my weight loss.”
4. Get support.
Often we know what actions would give us better health but we don’t do them. The main reason we don’t is that we lose motivation and belief that we can make changes.
The best way to be consistent with change is by having someone going through it with you or holding your hand through it.
So get someone to make a change with you or get a health coach to hold your hand through it.
I am a health coach who can hold your hand through your health journey, help you with your thoughts as well as guide you through lifestyle changes that will impact your health.
Jump on a call with me and we can determine if we are a good fit together.
