About Ditching Diets, Self-Love & The Healthy Triangle

6 REASONS WHY DIETS DON’T WORK:

• 95% of people who lose weight by dieting will regain it in 1 – 5 years. This is a scientific fact. Dieting, by definition, is a temporary food plan, and won’t work in the long run. Moreover, the deprivation of restrictive diets may lead to a diet-overeat or diet-binge cycle. And since your body doesn’t want you to starve, it responds to overly restrictive diets by slowing down your metabolism, making it even harder to lose weight. Dieting distorts your hormones and it is only a matter of time before you start to store fat locally and increase your problem.
• Fad diets (diets that promote short-term weight-loss) can be harmful. They often lack essential nutrients and teach you nothing about healthy eating. When you “complete” your fad diet, you simply get ‘boomeranged’ right back into the unhealthy eating patterns that caused your weight gain in the first place. This is the beginning of a long and frustrating process called “yo-yo dieting,” which can bring own health problems in its wake. Again you only increase your problem.
• Overly restrictive diets can take all the pleasure out of eating! Healthy food is delicious per definition and your body knows when to stop if you eat healthy.
• Dieting, along with the frequent and compulsive weighing that accompanies it, can lead to eating disorders. People who diet are 8 times more likely to develop an eating disorder than people who don’t.
• Immoral people may sell you quick “magic weight-loss potions,” such as “special” powders and pills, which will you money and time at best, and health conditions at worst. Skip the magic potions–it’s the healthy nutrition, exercise and rest that are the only really effective ingredients for a beautiful body.
• Obesity and overweight can be conditions that are caused by early life traumas, emotional struggles or psychological problems. In these cases, “…overeating and obesity weren’t the central problems, but attempted solutions.”

TRY THESE 3 STEPS INSTEAD:

• Step 1 towards permanent healthy weight loss, maybe somehow unexpected, is to not focus at weight loss at all. If you train yourself to change your mindset about losing weight, diets will become immediately irrelevant. End of story.
• Step 2 is to love yourself. This sounds perhaps a bit soft and strange, but (self) love is very powerful and there’s lots of hard-core science that self-love changes your body and changes your mind. Without self-love nothing will be sustainable. In the canvas below we’ll give you a simple 30-days exercise to practice it.

THE 30-DAY LOVE YOURSELF PROGRAM

Collect 10-15 photos from your past where you looked great. Looking at these photos can make you feel wonderful inside. If they have that profound, happy impact on you, you’ve selected the right ones. Next, you will write on a 10×15 cm piece of paper the following: “I accept myself unconditionally, right now”. Now stick it all around a mirror, on a notice board or on a wall in your bedroom. Look at your collage twice a day for a few minutes, during a quiet moment. The first 15-20 days you will be overwhelmed by all kinds of negative thoughts. However this will change, you will re-program your subconscious mind into a positive state. You’ll grow the willingness to change.

• Step 3 is to understand that a healthy body and a healthy mind only need 3 simple things: nutrition, exercise and rest. Implement the following principles and after a month you’ll start to feel new, radiant and healthy energies flowing through your body. That is when you will really start to lose weight, fast.

THE HEALTHY TRIANGLE:
NUTRITION, EXERCISE & REST

• Eat clean. Start to eat lots of fresh and organic vegetables. Reduce processed foods. Get rid of refined sugars. After one week you already feel a great difference.
• Take a walk for 30 minutes a day, preferably in nature and before you go to sleep. It’s great start for both your body and mind.
• Get 7-8 hours sleep a day, try to laugh as much as possible, be compassionate.

 
The healthy triangle is healthcoachFX‘ solid foundation. Your body age will drop 10-15 years, not only because we say so, but because your friends will tell you too. And when that moment comes along, it’s time to take some new pictures.

Sources:
“…about 95%…” From the National Eating Disorder Information Center (NEDIC) website, http://www.nedic.ca/knowthefacts/statistics.shtml(accessed 10/07/08).

“people who diet” Matz, Judith. “Beyond the Diet Mentality,”http://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/magazine/currentissue/923-in-consultation (accessed 10/19/10).

“early life trauma” Wylie, Mary Sykes, “As the Twig is Bent,” The Psychotherapy Networker, Sept/Oct 2010, or http://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/magazine/currentissue/1107-as-the-twig-is-bent

“hungry for change” http://www.hungryforchange.tv

Rehab Recovery offers a free help line and intervention service for people suffering from eating disorders. Tel: 0800 088 66 86 | Website

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