Is Your Diet Making You Gain Weight?

Have you ever noticed how well babies understand their hunger and fullness? As soon as they’re hungry they cry until they’re fed. When they’re full, they stop eating. It’s amazing and it’s exactly the basis of intuitive eating.

As adults, we’ve basically untrained our brains to know how to eat. With the marketing and advertising of diets and the newest rules in nutrition we’ve unlearned this basic human instinct, and it has driven us towards a disordered way of eating.

As we grow up, we start to learn “how to eat” - and we start filing foods into “good” and “bad” categories. It’s basically unavoidable.

As far back as I can remember, someone in my life was on a diet. At restaurants people would order their burgers “without the bun” because buns were “bad” and their salads with “dressing on the side” because dressing was“bad”.

In school, at the office, hanging out with friends and family, I’d constantly hear people complain about their weight and share the new strategy they had to lose it. A new diet, a new meal replacement, a juice cleanse, a new food group to cut out, a new number of calories to eat.

It was only a matter of time until I fell into it, too.

I remember wondering why my body hated me and asking why restricting food and overexercising wasn’t working!

Have you felt this way, too?

Here’s what I started to notice about dieting in myself, family members, friends, and coworkers. Results would come first, weight loss “success”. The compliments would pour in! It would last for about a month, maybe a few months until it eventually stopped working, “willpower” was lost and the weight would come back. Everyone thinks at this point, it’s time to hop back on the diet train, maybe on “Monday”?

I later learned the truth… going on a diet is more likely to help you GAIN weight than lose it.

In fact 40% of people regain MORE weight than their initial starting weight.

How can that be? Doesn’t your weight = calories in versus calories out? The reality is, it’s MUCH more complex than that, and the diet industry banks on this to keep you confused and consuming their plans.

Here’s what dieting ACTUALLY does to your body:

1. It slows down your metabolism, so it will take longer for your body to burn calories - that’s why you might feel like you’ve gained more weight back after dieting.

2. It disrupts your hormones causing you to still feel hungry after eating - that's why you still feel hungry even after you eat.

3. It makes you feel “addicted” to food, constantly obsessing and thinking about it - that’s why you feel like you can’t stop thinking about food!

So how did I change this? I ditched the diet rules of calorie counting and restricting and slowly I began to unlearn them. I found my food freedom, and guess what? That yo-yo dieting cycle of gaining, then losing, then gaining finally STOPPED!

I relearned how to eat intuitively and I finally figured out how to feed my body what it needs, maintain my weight, and feel good when I look in the mirror!

Intuitive eating focuses on nurturing your body instead of depriving it.

Turns out that if diet culture didn’t exist, intuitive eating would just be called EATING.

This is exactly why I’m so passionate about supporting my clients to become intuitive eaters.

Clients come to me looking for ways to break up with these unhealthy eating patterns. Together we unlearn the dieting rules that are drilled into our heads and begin learning to eat intuitively. My clients find a balanced ideal weight, lose the fear and stress around eating, and finally feel confident in their bodies.

Have you had this experience with the dieting cycle? Are you ready to rediscover how your body is meant to eat (intuitively) so you can finally feel confident in your body?

Join me for a FREE 30-minute Food & Body Freedom Assessment Call. Together we’ll look at your current diet and lifestyle and identify the simple shifts you can make to finally quit dieting, reach your ideal weight, and feel confident in your skin. Book your free call here.

Let’s drown out the noise of diet culture together, so you can stop the cycle of yo-yo dieting and finally focus on food that makes you look and feel your best.

Be Well,

Marissa