As I’ve mentioned before, in my line of work I have a lot of the same conversations over and over. More often than not it ends up being me trying to break down false believes about exercise and diet that people have been fed (pun intended) for profit.

 

Now I assure you that what I’m about to tell you will make me zero dollars and you are reading this for free. You have not failed at dieting, dieting has failed you. In fact, your diet mentality is probably exactly what has kept you on the vicious cycle of losing and gaining, moving forward then falling behind; your learned diet behaviors are most likely what has stopped you from being successful with your health goals.

 

Diets have a 90-95% FAILURE rate. Yet, you blame yourself. Isn't it ironic that we still haven't started blaming the process of dieting?

 

When it comes to my conversations involving diet it always seems funny to me that people ask, “what do you eat?”, but then go on to tell me all of the things that they try NOT to eat. I can’t help but think, what if they started focusing on what they should be eating and less on what they wanted to restrict?

 

To answer your question: I eat whatever I want. No, I’m not saying that in a manner of I eat whatever I want and just stay skinny. I’m saying I eat whatever I want intuitively.

 

The fact of the matter is, our bodies are much more intelligent than we treat them. And the fact that we make such strong attempts to “trick” our bodies sets us up for permanent failure.  The revolutionary book Intuitive Eating was first published in 1995 and has since been republished multiple times, the mission: make peace with food, free yourself from chronic dieting forever and rediscover the pleasures of eating. Doesn’t that sound nice?

 

Since it is the holiday season and the most well-known time of overeating, stress eating and well, eating I am going to share with you the first principle of Intuitive Eating. REJECT THE DIET MENTALITY.  Throw out the diet books and magazine articles that offer you false hope of losing weight quickly, easily, and permanently.

 

Get angry at the lies that have led you to feel as if you were a failure every time a new diet stopped working and you gained back all of the weight. If you allow even one small hope to linger that a new and better diet might be lurking around the corner, it will prevent you from being free to rediscover Intuitive Eating.

 

I challenge you THIS month, TODAY, not tomorrow or January 1 to get angry; get angry at the failure rate of diets, get angry that diets have made YOU feel like YOU were the failure and then let it go. When you start calculating calories, reject it. When you start thinking carbs are the problem, reject it. When you think you “shouldn’t” be eating something, reject it.

 

The only food I want you to restrict or avoid eating is food that makes you feel bad, physically. If you know you are going to feel like complete crap after eating something … don’t eat it. It really is that simple. If you are curious to learn more about Intuitive Eating, buy the book, check out the 10 principles or contact me; I’d love to share my experience and elation with intuitive eating! ENJOY your holiday season and your food!

 

Sweat & Smiles,

Melissa