"If you choose healthy or thin, you choose self-love rather than self-assessment." ~ Steve Maraboli
If we really care about health, we must stop trying to lose weight in 2020
I know that's the opposite of what we've been taught, but stay with me as I explain why I'm saying this.
Diet and weight loss obsessions actually cause weight gain and poorer overall health outcomes in our population.
Our culture has been obsessed with weight loss for generations. We were constantly bombarded with ridiculous claims about "quick weight loss" from more and more supposedly miraculous diets. It has been going on for hundreds of years.
How does it work for us with all this obsession? Is our population getting smaller and healthier? Barely. The opposite is the case.
Sure, we think a diet works, because often when we jump on another new plan, the initial weight loss happens fairly easily. We get excited and tell everyone who hears about the new miracle diet and how good we feel.
And when do we gain weight again? Well, it's our fault, isn't it?
We only get it back because we're stupid and "off the rails", right?
This has led the diet industry to believe us.
We were taught that every weight gain is bad. This is not only a fatal failure, but also a sign of laziness, gluttony and lack of self-control. We were also taught to be ashamed of it.
And weight loss? Well, that's always the holy grail to win in life, isn't it? It is an event worth celebrating!
So we go on a diet to "fix the problem".
Long-term studies show, however, that most people gain more weight over time with a weight loss diet.
Our obsession with losing weight leads to weight gain.
But we don't even need studies to prove it – we already know it because we experience it every day in real life.
Not only that, it also contributes to eating disorders and even kills us by causing eating disorders.
We die from being thin. Literally too often.
And again I ask, how does it work for us? How many years have you (or someone you know) tried to lose weight?
I routinely speak to women who started dieting in their teenage years (or younger), are now in their sixties and seventies, and have been desperately obsessed with losing weight all their lives – only to never really have a permanent one To achieve weight loss.
In fact, this is far more often the case than when someone actually loses weight, stops and then lives happily.
It is really annoying that we know that. The failure rate in weight loss attempts is so well known that it becomes a joke. There are millions of memes and internet jokes about it.
If someone tries to lose weight, they are expected to fail before they even start.
We know that the weight loss efforts are not working for us, but we are still afraid of how much more we could gain if we ever gave up the weight control struggle – without realizing that it is this fight that causes a lot of problems.
I like to take my girlfriend, whom we call Mary, as an example because Mary was me. She is you She is your sister, daughter, mother, girlfriend and employee.
Mary loves food. Who is not right But she often eats when she is not physically hungry, or continues to eat, even if she is already overcrowded. After a while it starts to gain a little weight. Because she lives in a world where weight gain is a tragic fate that she must avoid at all costs, she begins to judge herself for it. Her body and weight become problems that she absolutely has to solve.
The fixation on diet and weight loss has become an obsession for our society, thanks in large part to the inevitable weight loss associated with health.
She is afraid to put on more weight.
Because her brain has learned the habit of relying on food to solve any “problem” or alleviate any emotion, fear sends an autopilot signal to “eat”.
As she begins a restrictive diet that eliminates a ton of food that she's used to eating (many of which really need to get her body to peak performance), the survival instinct in her brain is afraid of hunger and creates cravings and cravings this will cause them to "relax" on their diet. More eating signals.
More fear. Fear that she will never stick to anything. Fear that it will continue to increase. Fear of others judgment on their growing body.
She feels guilty and ashamed not to have her weight or eating habits under control.
Shame makes her a bad person. She hates her body and struggles to love herself
She begins to make more and more fear-based, loveless decisions for her body because she is stuck in this cycle and repeats the same self-sabotaging behavior, namely "coming back on track" and "falling off the track", Going on a diet, losing weight and regaining weight again and again.
And here she stays all her life. In this place of obsession with her weight, without ever really changing it, except maybe to slowly gain weight.
She gets stuck in the place where she is "perfect" for a week, which means that she hardly eats anything and cuts out a ton of food to "fall off the track" for weeks or months and a train accident of self-destructive decisions to become until she decides to start over.
That is the reality. For the majority of the population, this is the result of our fixation on weight loss.
It doesn't make us thinner and healthier. it makes us heavier and destroys our mental and physical health.
This brings me to my point: If we really care about health, we have to break this association and no longer concentrate on weight loss. It is this obsession and association that makes our population heavier and less healthy.
When we really care about health, we no longer focus on weight loss, but on how it feels to live in our body and how the decisions we make affect it.
The decisions you make today will not affect your weight today, but they will affect how it feels to live in your body today.
If our focus is only on weight loss (as is so often the case), we get stuck in the self-destructive cycle I was talking about and we don't even try to make positive decisions for ourselves unless we do are on the right track ”and trying to lose weight. The rest of the time we ignore our health.
When we focus on weight loss and associate weight with health, we think I feel crappy because I'm overweight and I don't feel better until I lose weight … and since I'm already fat and myself feel like crap, why do something good for my body?
If the reality is, no matter how big we are, we can control how it feels to live in our bodies today, and often it's just a small decision or two.
If your body feels stiff and immobile, it's probably less because of your weight than because it only needs to be stretched a bit – but as long as you are stuck and obsessed with losing weight to get better to feel. It is far less likely that you only give him the few minutes of stretch that he asks for with the joint stiffness.
Even if wearing extra body fat is unhealthy (I am not saying it because it is absolutely not an automatic indicator of poor health, just like underweight), we will stop if we really care about weight loss.
This obsession doesn't work and, more importantly, makes us less healthy.
Weight gain is not always bad Sometimes it is the result of health and healing.
Weight loss is not always good Sometimes it is the result of illness.
There is not a single magical weight and no way of eating that guarantees everyone's health. So we have to stop worrying about these things.
A healthy life is not just about the choices we make for our bodies, and it is definitely not about deprivation, limitation, perfection, or punishment.
It's not about the number on a scale or the size of our jeans. It's not about pedometers, detoxification, fat-burning smoothies or thin Instagram models and their pretty pictures with recipes for organic, gluten-free, vegan, superfoods.
If we stopped thinking about what we weigh, whether we are eating well or badly today or when the next diet will begin, our brains would no longer be full of these things. all consuming thoughts and obsessions and we could start focusing on the things that are really important to our health, such as connection, compassion and self-confidence.
Things like the care of our body, our mind, our spirit and our relationships (not only externally, but internally – our relationship to ourselves, to food, to our body).
We can begin to accept where we are, find out where we are going, and make ourselves comfortable to be a little uncomfortable as we work to get there.
We can show up for ourselves every day, a small selection after another. We can focus on how we want to live, how we want to feel in our bodies, who we want to be and what small daily decisions are required to get there.
This is how we actually improve our health.
About Roni Davis
Roni Davis is a coach, author, speaker, and podcaster who helps women rebuild trust, compassion, and connectedness so that they can relate to food, themselves, and theirs Bodies and Heal to People Live the healthy, peaceful and joyful life they deserve. Find them on RoniDavis.com, in their podcast on It & # 39; s All In Your Head, and don't miss their informative, free eBook: ronidavis.com/whydieatthat, which is designed to help you overcome your obstacles to weight loss, healthy eating and you sometimes eat the reason for the hell to be so self-destructive.
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