How To Lose Weight And Eat Happily
Why dieting never worked for you and why you should free yourself
“This is it. My leggings are getting tight. My LEGGINS. It’s official, I have to do something” my best friend Valentina laments on the phone. It’s a tradition of ours. Every few weeks, it’s just “too much”. “I can’t fit into my favorite shorts” and “I’m avoiding my jeans on purpose, pretending I like dresses more now, just because at least I can still fit into my tights”. We lament and exchange on weekly offenses that our bodies put us through. Usually, it goes hand in hand with “Ok, from TODAY, I have to do something” or “I’m cutting all chocolate for 30 days” and all kinds of nonsense that we’ve never ever respected.
Truth is, the older we get, the harder it is to stay fit and shed a few pounds easily. Gone are the days of one or two hard weeks at the gym to get back to pre Christmas shape. Now it feels you barely have time to make it for the next Christmas and then start all over again. Seems like we are working twice as much to get half of the results. This is due to a happy mix of higher stress levels, slower metabolism, and loss of muscles, less time to work out, and cook homemade meals, and a more sedentary lifestyle where we are mostly sitting at our desks all day working.
And then, usually, we all reach a point where we have enough. Where we decide to do something about it. The problem is, it is usually something drastic, that it is completely unsustainable in the long run. And it’s human enough. Personally, when I start out something, I need to see quick results, to get a surge of hope, to keep going. If nothing happens after efforts, I’ll just give up in despair. But this only helps to create an unhealthy vicious circle: a not too healthy lifestyle leading to drastic measures to get it under control, too drastic to keep at it, go back to an unhealthy lifestyle until it’s too much again and go for the measures.
It took me years to arrive at a peaceful mind and ideas about what a healthy lifestyle is and should be. Dieting, feeling guilty about food and excessive rigor will lead you nowhere. Just liberate your mind and your body.
Diets are by definition restrictive
The first point worth mentioning is that self-control goes with pleasure. Restrictive diets will never work in the long run. About 95% of people who lose weight by dieting will regain it in 1 to 5 years. Depriving yourself of food that you love will never be something that you can sustain in the long run.
“Restrictive diets fail because they are as they sound: restrictive. They leave you hungry, cranky, and quite literally your body fights them by increasing your cravings and ramping up how hungry you are. In fact, dieting is linked in and of itself to overeating and weight gain over time” explains Jennipher Walters, co-founder of FitBottomedGirls.com, and certified personal trainer.
Restriction is a common trigger for binge eating, it will just end up in “cheat days” where you lose the benefit of a whole excruciating week of raw carrots and tasteless chicken. More than that, it can also trigger what psychologists call the “what the hell effect”. Meaning trying to resist your favorite cookies all week, finally caving in and eating one at 4 o’clock Friday, and ending up eating the whole damn box because the diet is blown anyway.
We are so wired to think of working out and eating healthy as hard work and commitment that we tend to forget that enjoyment is one of the greatest motivating factors.
“I’m in favor of ditching dieting — in any form or by any name and replacing it with intuitive eating and mindful eating. This removes restrictions, drops the food morality, gets you more in touch with your body and your natural hunger cues, and replaces the restrict-binge-shame cycle with actual health and self-care” advocate Jennipher.
The chance of sticking to a lifestyle of restrictions and painful gym commitments are close to zero. On the other hand, the chances of sticking to a lifestyle of healthy choices that make you feel better in your life, more balanced, are sensibly higher.
And that’s really putting the finger on the main problem of restrictive diets, and dieting in general. Diet implies depriving yourself of some foods in order to achieve a goal. But what happens when this goal is achieved? You’ll go back to the foods you love, you’ll gain the weight you’ve lost in no time, you’ll go back to the miserable life of dieting days. Dieting should be traded for healthier choices in everyday life, without restriction. If you want to eat the cookie, just eat the damn cookie. And if you’re too exhausted for that 5k run today, just skip it. We need a balance, an equilibrium that’s sustainable in the long run, not short spams of extreme effort and extreme restrictions.
Eating too little for your body to function
Now, I go on and on about long term results and approaches and you might be thinking, that’s all good and fine, but what about restricting my diet just to lose those few extra Christmas pounds, and then go back to my sustainable life long approach? Well, wrong again.
Your body is actually an incredibly smart and fine-tuned machine, able to take in data and prepare for survival. When you go too low into your food intakes and high into your burned calories, your body will automatically protect itself, and go into “starvation mode”.
“Starvation mode is when your body isn’t getting enough fuel to properly sustain itself for optimal living. This can lead to muscle loss, nutrient deficits, decreased mood, and a number of other issues. If you don’t eat enough, you can definitely go into starvation mode. It’s very hard on your body in just about every way possible — physical, emotional, mental. Simply put, we all need adequate amounts of all foods to feel good.” explains Jennipher Walters.
Restricting yourself might just be completely counterproductive. Now, of course, this is to take into a balanced and intelligent way of thinking. Obviously, if you’ve taken a few and stop eating dessert for two weeks, that’s fair. If you stop the extra cookie at lunch for a while to get rid of the week at your parent's extras, fine. It just has to be balanced, smart, and thought about. It’s easy to fall into the trap of seeing quick results for efforts and wanting to increase efforts for quicker results still. But then you enter the realm of the unsustainable, and you waste your efforts and enter a vicious circle.
The “Bad” or “Good” food myth
And when I say balanced, I don’t mean eating salads every lunch and steamed vegetables for dinner. I’m not saying skip breakfast, fill yourself with water when you’re hungry, and do 2 hours of sport every single day. In today’s world of fitness Instagram accounts, with before/after pictures and glamorized quinoa bowls’ photos, the ideas of what is bad or good for you are completely messed up.
“I think there’s a lot of misinformation out there about diets, weight-loss, and health. I don’t believe in “good” foods or “bad” foods. Yes, there are definitely some foods that have many more health benefits than others, but as long as there’s not a food allergy or intolerance at play, no one should feel bad for having the foods that they crave. We always say that you can’t hate yourself healthy, and it comes down to your food, too. Pay attention to what foods make you feel good, honor your natural hunger and fullness cues, and LOVE eating what’s on your plate!” exclaims Jennipher, when asked about “bad foods”.
Counting calories is not the solution either. Because it will drive you slightly obsessional after a while, because you will restrict yourself in crazy ways, but most of all, because, even if all calories have the same energy content, they don’t have the same effects on your weight. Fruits versus chocolate honey cereals bars may have the same calories count in your app, but they will not have the same effect on your body. Refined food will keep you filled for a shorter time, and bring you fewer nutrients and vitamins than fruits.
“In my experience, counting calories usually leads to restrictive dieting — and can easily result in obsessive behavior (or even eating disorders). Not to mention that calories really tell such a flawed and small story about the food we’re eating — from nutrients to vitamins and minerals, to the people we’re eating it with, and to the reasons why we’re eating it culturally.” develops Jennipher.
A healthier lifestyle
There’s no perfect solution, and contrary to what social media are telling you, no, weight loss is not easy, and there’s no miracle solution and 30 days changing-life-diet.
“It’s worth noting that the diet and the weight-loss industry is an estimated $72 billion market. $72 billion! It won’t be so lucrative if anything actually worked … so don’t fall for it. The best thing you can do for your health is to educate yourself on diet culture, better understand what dieting actually is and how you may be doing it without knowing it, and learn to take your power back”, encourages Jennipher.
I won’t lie, it might take a while to construct a healthier lifestyle. It will be frustrating because the changes won’t be evident right away. You will not suddenly lose weight. It will start with healthier looks, better skin, nice posture. You will start to feel more at ease in your skin, refreshed, not craving fatty food as much as before. You’ll feel full and rested, and you’ll start eating without guilt but without the feeling that you are sacrificing yourself for a better cause either.
Nowadays, we often confuse weight loss with a healthy lifestyle. We forget that dieting is something temporary, and lifestyle is forever. Instead of approaching weight loss with a dieting mindset, we should make it a goal to change our lifestyle in a permanent way, to become a healthier, happier, and fitter person.
I couldn’t imagine a life where I wouldn’t go to the restaurant with my best friends, where I wouldn’t go eat a massive burger with my sister after training, or where I wouldn’t cook extravagant brunches on Sundays for my boyfriend. These things make me genuinely happy. And I shouldn’t feel guilty about it, I should instead integrate all of that in a larger, healthy lifestyle, where I naturally compensate those things by other things. Without planning for it, without counting it, just by living it.
And we should not forget that we are not all the same. Our bodies have a weight set point and will ALWAYS try to get back to it. We might then not all reach the same goal while living the same lifestyle, eating the same food or, going through the same diet. And that is completely fine. As Jennipher Walters believes, “healthy and fit bottoms come in ALL shapes and sizes!”. And we should all remember that.
