When you feel the need to escape diet prison you’re in for a ride.
Paving the way from being obsessed about your body to living in food and diet freedom is truly an adventure of a lifetime. You’ll feel SO. MUCH. JOY., experience SO. MUCH. FEAR. and tons of in-between emotions that you probably can’t even name.
One of the coolest and most challenging steps on the way towards liberty from the never-ending weight loss drama is un-learning the beliefs that you’ve been repeating in your mind for decades; the major lies you’ve been fed for all of your life. You may feel torn between the ideas that have kept you going and the truths that you may not be ready to accept just yet. Those lies have kept you in the horror-filled land of the dieters and now feel too painful, but at the same time still feel so safe, so comfortable, so very much like home.
Except that they don’t.
They also feel like they’re suffocating you, dragging you deeper into the hell of restricting.
Now you’re faced with the decision to either keep on holding on to those limiting beliefs or to break them apart and finally take a stand for your Self and for your right to live a fuller life.
Here are the top 5 lies you tell yourself about dieting and weight and the remedies that’ll lead you out of the darkness.
I am not ready to stop dieting
I get it. Dieting is your entire life. It’s who you are, who you’re supposed to be. The promise of a thin body gives you hope of who you CAN and SHOULD be. Dieting gives you the light at the end of the tunnel when times are hard. It keeps you going and at least gives you something to focus on when nothing else seems to fall into place.
Or something like that.
But dieting is also your biggest nightmare, isn’t it? It’s the one thing that keeps you stuck in the future or slain to the past, unable to live, forever glued in a bleak existence of self-blame and shame. Dieting ensures that your life is nothing but a slow, painful road to death.
What to consider instead:
The moment you hear this whisper in your heart, this little nudge that tells you it’s time for a better life, you are ready to give up dieting. Otherwise you wouldn’t even think of getting the hell out of your current situation, of finding a better way. There’ll never be the perfect moment, never be the one time that you are 100% prepared to leave your dieting existence behind, but you can be certain that if the thought pops into your mind and heart, it’s time to GO.
You are ready because you’re thinking of it. That’s the only evidence you need.
Dieting is harmless
What else could it be, right?
After all, everyone is on a diet at all times: your co-worker, your mom, your best-friend, the guy in the supermarket around the corner, even the Uber driver that gives you a lift to the airport. Everyone diets.
Magazines share the tremendous self-esteem boosting benefits of diets, doctors praise the miraculous healing powers of diets, corporations regularly proclaim the wonders of weight loss diets and the horror of anything promoting anything else.
Dieting is portrayed as the remedy to almost everything. And yet, it’s anything but harmless.
What to consider instead:
More and more research suggests that dieting has severe consequences that impact your health and overall wellbeing in negative ways.
Diets impair your level of concentration, the articulation of your thoughts, your understanding of connections and your memory.
Diets cause tremendous stress, which causes your body to go into a stress response that releases the hormone cortisol into the bloodstream. Not only does this hormone make it difficult for you to keep your weight, it can also lead to more serious physical problems.
Infections can increase, bone density is reduced, your blood pressure increases, your blood vessels are damaged, and you can become insulin-resistant – just to name a few consequences.
There are, of course, many more issues that result from dieting.
Still believe that dieting is harmless?
No? Good!
Now, begin to listen to your body and really feel into her: does she like the constant hunger, pressure, fear, guilt and shame? If she doesn’t, what can you do instead?
Educate yourself on all the negative effects of weight loss diets and allow the results from your body scans and your research to open your eyes to the truth.
It’s unhealthy to stop dieting
How many times have you been told that dieting is the only way to manage your weight, your illnesses, your life? How many health professionals have warned you not to go off your diet or if you do, at least replace the current diet with another one?
It’s “normal” to believe that living a diet-free life is unhealthy or even dangerous, but the truth shines quite a different light.
What to consider instead:
Giving up dieting is anything but unhealthy. What’s unhealthy is the weight cycling that you’re subjecting your body to when you keep chasing one diet after the next.
The truth is that many of the issues we’ve subscribed to obesity may be caused by our constant weight cycling as the stress is too much for your body to take.
There are also severe mental ramifications that come with dieting and the shame and guilt that dieters feel all the time. This shame can lead to depression, low self-esteem, anxiety and eating disorders and to the activation of a protein that promotes the development of disease. Extreme anger is also linked to constant food restriction.
No matter how you twist and turn it, dieting is not only extremely agonizing but it also leads to serious physical and mental impairments and illnesses.
Once you STOP, you will give your body the chance to come back to balance and wellbeing – in the true sense of those words.
I will never like my fat body
The only way I can like my body is if it’s thin. There’s just too much fat, too much skin, too much yuck to like. I’ll never accept myself this way. I’ll never give in to this body.
These are words I hear a lot in my coaching sessions. Not only do they break my heart but they also do not have to be true. At. All. There are many women out there who’ve learned to first accept and then love their bodies – at the exact weight they never thought they could.
What to consider instead:
Body-acceptance and body-love don’t depend on your size.
How often have you looked back at photos of yourself from years ago and thought “I wish I could’ve seen how … I was but I had no idea. I hated my body so much.”
That’s evidence of the fact that it’s your attitude, not your weight that determines your experience of body-respect and body-love.
Instead of pushing the idea of body-acceptance to a place you can never access, begin to embody now. There’s so much you can do to feel GREAT in your body at this point. Give your body a chance to prove to you that she is worthy – no matter he weight.
I will gain a ton of weight when I stop dieting
The fear of weight gain might be the biggest reason why we’re having such a hard time to stop dieting and hurting ourselves. Weight gain feels like a death, the biggest shame, the most excruciating failure. We want to do anything in our power to not have our body go down that road, right?
The thing is… it’s not really our decision to make.
What to consider instead:
We aren’t the ones in power, our bodies are.
The truth is that you might gain weight, yes. You also might lose some weight or stay the same weight you are right now. It all depends on your natural setpoint, on your body’s needs.
What you need to remember is that dieting almost ensures that you will gain weight. Every time.
There are many factors that may contribute to weight gain post dieting. Things like binge eating, freedom eating, re-balancing your weight, movement, your current weight all play a role. There’s definitely a healing process you will go through and the outcome may not be known to you right now, but the same is true for the outcome of dieting.
The only difference is the level of suffering that you’ll endure.
Yeah, the way out of diet prison is an invitation into the deepest realms of your fears and hopes. You’ll need to make decisions based on your experience and your intuition, but you’ll also need to be open to new thoughts, new truths and a real understanding of how dangerous dieting is.
Are you ready – like really ready – escape diet prison?
Book your coaching session with me now!
