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Here’s a wild thought, what if it’s not you who’s failing your diet, but your diet that’s failing you?
As the often dreaded four-letter word returns to the vocabularies of those attempting to lose weight as part of their new year’s resolutions, dieticians and psychologists are encouraging a shift in mindsets, and ditching the idea of diets as quick fixes.
Bianca Tromp, a registered dietitian at the Heart and Stroke Foundation, says: “I think the problem is that we see a diet as a temporary effort to reach long-term results, where a diet is defined as a set meal plan to be abided by strictly.
“A quick-fix diet that we tend to start during the new year is not the only way to lose weight, and is usually not healthy.
“These diets have given healthy eating a bad reputation and individuals who have tried and failed these diets are reluctant to try any other diet in future.”
Tromp says one of the biggest pitfalls dieters often fall into is thinking that you can abide by a strict diet for a short period of time until you reach your goal weight, after which you can return to eating as you did before.
“If you eat like you ate before the diet, you will weigh what you weighed before the diet. Having a monotonous diet that offers little variety is the biggest pitfall. A meal plan should be constructed in such a way that it includes a variety of foods and should suit your lifestyle,” she said.
And it’s not just about food.
“When you make the decision to live a healthy lifestyle, it does not only include diet. Including 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week, getting enough sleep, keeping hydrated, limiting alcohol intake and reducing your stress can all contribute,” Tromp said.
“A healthy diet should not only be defined by its capability to let one lose weight, but also by its contribution of macro and micronutrients to ensure health.”
In comes the anti-diet plan, a programme devised by US psychologist Dr Alexis Conason. It is part of a growing movement that, according to her website, aims “to end shame, guilt and self-hatred related to the failures of dieting”.
The plan helps you “turn off the dieting mentality and start eating in a way that feels natural and attuned to your body”.
Through the plan, Conason harnesses the research-based tools of mindfulness meditation, cognitive behavioural therapy, as well as acceptance and compassion-focused interventions to change the way her patients relate to food, their bodies and themselves.
She told City Press this week: “The anti-diet plan is based on a large body of scientific research which shows that diets don’t work. Contrary to what most people believe, the most likely long-term outcome of dieting is actually weight gain.”
“Not only does the science show that diets fail for upwards of 90% of people, it is also linked with a number of problematic health outcomes, including increased risk of eating disorders and disordered eating, body image dissatisfaction, weight cycling – losing and regaining weight over and over again – and other factors associated with metabolic diseases, including diabetes and mortality.”
The plan is premised on the idea that what we’ve been told is the path to health and wellbeing, that is, dieting doesn’t work, so let’s try something different.
“Wanting to lose weight and wanting to get healthy are two different things. We can absolutely do one without the other. For example, we often do a lot of really unhealthy things when we try to lose weight and, in converse, we can improve our health by making behavioural changes and our weight may not change,” Conason said.
According to Conason, the principles behind the anti-diet plan are that dieting doesn’t work and that our bodies have the wisdom to guide us on our path to health; we just need to get out of our own way.
“My programme is all about helping people make peace with their bodies, so we can actually listen to the important information that our bodies are trying to send us. This includes signals like hunger and fullness, the taste of foods, how our bodies react to certain foods, and how our bodies like to be active,” she explained.
Contrary to popular opinion, Conason said change comes from a place of self-acceptance and compassion, when we want to take the best possible care of ourselves because we love and value ourselves, rather than from a place of hating ourselves.
“Our weight doesn’t determine our health and, to be frank, our attempts to lose weight and keep it off long-term aren’t working,” she said.
“Not only are our weight loss efforts not working, they are also harming our health and increasing our risk of psychological and medical problems. So let’s try something different. If we really want to improve health, we need to focus on things like eating in tune with our body’s natural signals, engaging in pleasurable forms of physical activity and reducing stress.”
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