I hate diets. Diets are unhealthy, they don’t work, they’re not fun and they promote an unhealthy relationship with food. Food is awesome. It is meant to fuel the body and be enjoyed.
When I think of diets I think of calorie counting, measuring food, stressing out over portions and eating processed junk just because it’s low in calories or carbs. Can you live your life that way? I can’t, and I wouldn’t want to. I haven’t counted calories or carbs or weighed or measured my food in years. And yet, I’m in better shape than I have ever been. You can be too.
When people find out that I’m a health coach, they assume at least one of the following:
- I don’t eat fat
- I don’t eat meat
- I count calories
- I love soy
- I’m a granola eater
- I restrict my food intake
- I don’t eat bacon
None of these are correct or healthy. I recently read an article about the hugely popular Tracy Anderson. The diet Tracy Anderson recommends is despicable. It is a step above anorexia. It is low calorie, no fat, hardly any nutrients and promotes genetically modified food. I don’t mean to attack Tracy Anderson’s diet in particular, I mean to attacks diets as whole. Tracy Anderson’s diet shares these commonalities with all other diets: restricting food, counting calories, eating processed food that is riddled with GMOs just because it’s “low-cal.” While diets may be effective at helping you lose weight on the short term, you will inevitably gain weight in the long run. Who can maintain these restrictive, unhealthy diets? And furthermore, this type of dieting is extremely unhealthy. Diets are unhealthy because:
- Diets impair metabolic function.
- They don’t fuel the body or provide necessary nutrients. This leads to deficiencies that cause acne prone or dull skin, weak, dry hair and brittle nails (and eventually, nutrient deficiencies lead to serious diseases, like cancer).
- The lack of calories causes your body to store fat.
- Diets promote disordered eating and an unhealthy relationship with food.
- Diets are not a long-term option.
I’ll let you in on a secret: there is no diet that will do for you what eating real, unprocessed, whole food does.
You do need to count calories, weigh food or restrict food. You do not need to diet ever again. As women we are particularly prone to dieting, and diets are marketed specifically for us. We have to stop falling into these traps. We need to regain our health and our bodies and give up these bullshit diets. It’s time to ditch the diet. It’s time to enjoy food. It’s time to nourish our bodies. It’s time to own your own health and your beauty. It’s time for a lifestyle change.
Check out my 21 Day Lifestyle Transformation to learn how to give up the diets and lose weight by becoming the healthiest, most beautiful version of yourself.
