Why your diet will never work.
Hey you with that diet coke in your hand.
And you who has been daydreaming about what you’ll eat for lunch since the minute you finished your (paltry) breakfast.
You too, my midnight snacker, the one who is scoffing the last of the chocolate whilst also googling the new diet you’ll start tomorrow.
And you my love, who has been on a diet since you were 13 and can’t remember the last time you ate without ‘rules’.
And those of you who are also stuck in the cycle of no breakfast, strict lunch only to ‘blow it all’ after work when you get home because you are (understandably) BLOODY STARVING!
Yes I’m talking to you who mentally goes off at yourself for having no self-control each time you indulge in something ‘bad’.
And you who has given up EVER losing weight because you’ve tried all of the diets and they’ve never worked.
I’m talking you today and I want to tell you a secret.
Your diet is never going to work. Here’s why…
Rules are made for breaking.
I don’t know about you but as soon as I make a rule about what I can and can’t eat – I want to break it. No chocolate for a week – then chocolate becomes ALL I can think about! Even if ordinarily I don’t eat chocolate all that often.
Energy goes where attention flows…
When you become obsessed with losing weight you typically also become obsessed with feeling dissatisfied with how you currently look. If this is where your energy is going… feeling bad about yourself, then you are only going to get more of the same… feeling unhappy and self-conscious.
Even if you do end up losing weight you’ll likely still not be happy because you won’t even be able to see it to celebrate it. Instead, if you focus on how good you feel when you look after yourself and eat nourishing food you get to feel better immediately and the chances are the results will also follow because that is where you are devoting your energy.
It’s only ever a temporary fix
All of those quick fix, extreme diet plans are only ever a temporary fix. No one who wants to enjoy their life, eat the occasional piece of cake and enjoy food with friends, is able to sustain one of these diets long term.
They set us up to fail by banning food types, by making things off limits. And what do you do when you inevitably ‘slip up’? Then it’s all-on-donkey-kong and before you know it you’re eating all of those banned foods that you haven’t had in days… weeks.. before beating yourself up about having no self-control, and vowing to start you diet fresh tomorrow.
How do I know all this? I’ve been there… for too many years to admit. From my early teens well into my mid-twenties I spent WAY too much brain power worrying about what I ate and how I was going to lose weight.
Oh and here’s the best bit – for the most part when I look back at photos all I can see is a beautiful young girl who had nothing to worry about. Yet at the time when I looked in the mirror – I remember feeling disgusted by why I saw.
What a waste!
I’m talking about this more in the video. If this resonates with you I’d love to hear your story. Know someone who needs to hear this message today? I’d love if you would share this with them as well.