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The Power of Mindful Eating: Finding Balance and Control with Your Favourite Foods

In a world where diets and food restrictions seem to dominate the conversation about healthy eating, there’s a gentle, transformative practice that often goes unnoticed: mindful eating. Contrary to popular belief, this approach doesn’t involve counting calories or imposing rigid rules on your diet. Instead, it encourages you to develop a deeper connection with your food and your body, ultimately helping you regain control around what you eat.

Mindful Eating: A Holistic Approach

Mindful eating is a holistic approach to food that encourages you to be present and attentive to your eating experiences. It’s about savouring each bite, appreciating the flavours, and listening to your body’s cues. In a world where we often rush through meals or eat on the go, mindful eating invites us to slow down and savour the moment.

Embracing Your Favourite Foods

One of the most significant misconceptions about mindful eating is that it restricts you from enjoying your favorite foods. Quite the opposite, it encourages you to indulge in them fully. When you savour your favourite foods mindfully, you allow yourself to truly enjoy them without guilt or regret. This experience can be liberating and even healing for those who struggle with food-related guilt and anxiety.

Maintaining a Healthier Relationship with Food

Mindful eating fosters a healthier relationship with food by eliminating the cycle of deprivation and bingeing. When you permit yourself to enjoy your favourite foods without judgment, you remove the allure of forbidden fruits. This, in turn, reduces the likelihood of eating more than you intend to or feeling out-of-control around food.

Moreover, mindful eating helps you become more attuned to your body’s hunger and fullness cues. You learn to eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re satisfied. Additionally, mindful eating naturally supports a more balanced diet. This intuitive approach prevents the fluctuations in weight that often accompany restrictive diets and the subsequent ”overeating” that can follow periods of deprivation.

The Benefits of Mindful Eating

Here are some of the key benefits of incorporating mindful eating into your life:

Enhanced Enjoyment: When you’re present with your food, every meal becomes a source of pleasure. You can savour the richness of your favourite foods without overindulging.
Improved Digestion: Mindful eating promotes better digestion by allowing your body to properly process and absorb nutrients when you’re fully engaged in the act of eating.
Stress Reduction: Being mindful can reduce stress and emotional eating, helping you manage your relationship with food during challenging times.
Body stability: By listening to your body’s signals and eating intuitively, you’re less likely to experience dramatic fluctuations in body size.
Long-Term Sustainability: Unlike restrictive diets that are difficult to maintain over time, mindful eating is a sustainable practice that can be incorporated into your daily life.

Conclusion

In a world obsessed with quick fixes and extreme dieting, mindful eating offers a refreshing alternative. It empowers you to have a more balanced relationship with food, allows you to enjoy your favorite foods guilt-free, and naturally supports a healthier lifestyle. By being present and attentive at the table, you can regain control around food and embark on a journey towards a more harmonious and sustainable approach to eating. So, why not take a moment to savour your next meal and experience the transformative power of mindful eating for yourself?

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Can’t stop eating Eggs? Here’s how Intuitive Eating can help you this Easter.

Surely allowing yourself to eat as many easter eggs as you want can’t be a good thing, right? This is a question I frequently get asked. Read on to find out more about intuitive eating at Easter!

Is it just me or does it feel like shops put their Easter eggs on display earlier and earlier each year? The heart-shaped chocolates for Valentines day have barely left the shelves when in flock the chocolatey yellow-foiled chicks, smiling bunnies and eggs of all sizes. Egg sales soared during the pandemic as people shared and consumed the creamy-sweet Easter food during this unpredictable time (1). The sharing and consumption of chocolatey food can be delicious, joyous and comforting.

However, in a world of ‘a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips’ and constant fear-mongering about peoples’ ”ever-growing waistlines”, chocolatey goods can come with a plethora of emotion. Chocolate, like many other tasty foods, is often associated with being an ‘unhealthy’ food that should be limited or avoided for fear of weight gain.

When you are in the grips of disordered eating or trying to ‘be good’ and eat the ‘right’ things, it is quite likely that you’re relationship with chocolates and easter eggs includes worries of eating more than you intend to, feeling out-of-control and feelings of guilt shame. You might eat a small amount of an easter egg and tell yourself ‘that’s enough now, I shouldn’t eat anymore’, only to find yourself returning soon after for more. If this is you, there is nothing wrong with you, this is a natural biologically-driven response to restriction.

in the context of disordered eating, any relationship to the tasty eggs can be laden with feelings of guilt, shame and trying to control how much of the food you do eat (and feeling like a failure when you eat more than what you promised to stick to). Intuitive eating, however, sits in contrast. An intuitive eater will allow themselves to eat as much as they desire in order to feel satisfied and then move on with their day. No guilt, no shame, no obsessively thinking about the easter egg that’s in the cupboard and wondering how long you can hold out from opening it. Intuitive eaters are present with the easter egg, enjoying the chocolatey taste and creamy texture. They eat until they feel satisfied and that’s that.

Eating Intuitively can actually help, rather than hinder, your relationship with the chocolatey egg-shaped goodies. Intuitive Eating is both a process and a practice (if you’re interested in hearing more about intuitive eating, you might find this podcast episode useful). Intuitive Eaters listen to, and trust their body to guide them in their eating patterns.

But if I allow myself to eat whatever my body wants, I won’t stop eating!

The idea of trusting your body to tell you when you are hungry and satisfied can be scary, especially if you have spent years dieting or disordered eating. If you swing from feeling really ‘on it’ and ‘eating healthy’ to feeling like you’ve pressed the f*** it button and that you’ve blown it with your eating habits, it makes sense that you might associate the idea of intuitive eating with this f*** it stage. I hear you. If you are ready, and you wish to try eating intuitively this easter, try the following 3 tips:

Tip 1:

Aim for true satisfaction and choose your favourite eggs this Easter. Out with the low-calorie, Free-from, diet eggs and in with the creamy, tasty and chocolatey, wholesome Easter eggs.

Tip 2:

Nourish yourself! Make sure you’re eating enough though the day. Even if you feel like you’ve eaten too much the night before. Your body needs nourishment on a daily basis no. matter. what. It can be tempting to pull the reigns tighter and restrict the morning after an evening of easter eggs but undereating will simply set the stage for another binge the next day.

Tip 3:

When you choose a food to eat, enjoy it! So many of us will eat foods while thinking ‘I shouldn’t be eating this’ or ‘I’ll make up for this later’. This kind of thinking distracts you from being fully present with, and fully enjoying the tasty food in front of you. I’d like to invite you to be present with your Easter goodies. Feel the texture of the foil as you unwrap it. Notice the different smells – are there notes of caramel? Is it nutty? Finally, take a bite. Connect with the tastes and textures in your mouth.

Intuitive Eating can truly be liberating, but it is not always easy. If you would like support with your relationship with food, feel free to contact me on the email below or book your Free Discovery Call.

References

BBC News [accessed 30/03/23] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56574794 Easter egg sales ‘soar by almost 50%’

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Key signs you might have disordered eating

New research has shown that 22% of children and teens, globally, are disordered eaters (1). For many of the people I work with, a disordered relationship with food starts in early years. However, because disordered eating is so normalised in society, some people may not even realise that their relationship with food is disordered.

”Up to 3 out of every 4 women have disordered eating behaviours.”

As you get older, your risk of disordered eating increases. A survey revealed that up to 3 out of every 4 women have disordered eating behaviours (2). Disordered eating is everywhere, it’s normalised. Read on to figure out if you may have a disordered relationship with food.

Disordered eating relates to food and eating behaviours which do not meet criteria for an eating disorder but can still negatively impact you physical, mental or emotional wellbeing. The Continuum of Eating below shows the relationship between eating disorders, disordered eating and normative or intuitive eating (3).

On one end of the spectrum lie diagnosable eating disorders with clearly defined criteria. On the other end of the spectrum is someone who is an intuitive eater. This is a person who doesn’t engage in any food rules, restriction or dieting behaviours and trusts their body to communicate to them what, when and how much to eat. Disordered eating is everything in between.

Examples of disordered eating include (but is certainly not limited to!):

Going on a diet e.g. intermittent fasting, keto or 5:2
Categorising foods or eating behaviours as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or things you ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ do
Feeling guilt or shame when breaking food rules
Tracking what you eat e.g. calorie and macro counting
Restricting the amount of food you eat
‘Compensating’ for what you eat e.g. through exercise or having a ‘healthier’ meal later

It’s important not to underestimate the impact that a poor relationship with food or your body might be having on your day-to-day life. Disordered Eating can make you feel like you don’t know how to eat ‘right’, that you are doing something ‘wrong’. It can increase the amount of time you spend thinking about food and your body and stop you from getting a much needed cake and a cuppa with friends. Disordered Eating can cause you to eat secretly or feel ashamed about your eating patterns. It can make you feel frustrated that your child wants to have McDonald’s for their birthday meal because you’re not sure if it will fit into your new plan. Disordered eating can leave you feeling exhausted, isolated and down.

If you think you may experience disordered Eating please know that you are not alone and you are deserving of support. If you are curious about what a healthy relationship with food might look like, feel free to check out the FREE ‘Road to Intuitive Eating’ Workbook.

References

Lopez-Gil et al. (2023) Global proportion of disordered eating in children and adolescents: A systematic review and meta-analysis
UNC school of Medicine [cited 27/02/2023]; https://uncnewsarchive.unc.edu/2008/04/22/survey-finds-disordered-eating-behaviors-among-three-out-of-four-american-women-2/
Laura Thomas (2018) Just Eat It

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Tired of ‘New Year New Me’? Try this instead!

The New Year brings with it hope. Hope that things will be different, better even. The winter solstice has been and gone. The days are going to get longer and brighter again. Many people look for ways to refocus and find direction for 2023. One industry which capitalises from this search for renewed energy and direction is the Diet and Wellness Industry. Each year, we are promised a new way of eating – one that will really work this time! Yet, science shows that the overwhelming majority of people regain any weight they lose. Some people regain more than they lost in the first place (Mann et al.). You know this to be true because, statistically, you are probably one of these people.

If this is your first time reading about the poor ‘success’ rates of diets and weight loss pursuits, it will probably conflict with your current thoughts around diets. Surely trying to lose weight is good for you, right? I’d like to invite you to read on with an open mind. We are shown promises of body transformations and weight loss ‘hacks’ on a daily basis. Let me ask you this, if diets and weight loss pursuits truly worked, why do people search for the key to weight loss each new year? If any one of their previous diets had worked, why would they need another one? If a medication had the same failure rate as diets – it would be pulled from the market.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

”If a medication had the same failure rate as diets – it would be pulled from the market.”

Diets and weight loss pursuits do not deliver on their only promise: sustainable weight loss. Not only that but many people will get the exact opposite of what they promised – weight gain! Perhaps your thinking, well there’s no harm in trying because I need to lose weight. Diets and the pursuit of weight loss are linked with several negative outcomes such as an increased risk of binge eating, long term yo-yo dieting, poor self-esteem, poor mental health and increased risk of eating disorders (Hazzard et al.; Neumark-Sztainer et al.). Dieting and pursuing weight loss is not risk free.

You may be thinking ‘but I need to lose weight’. I hear you. This change in thinking is demanding. It asks you to let go of the pursuit of weight loss. This can feel like being asked to let go of your health, wellbeing, relationship prospects or anything else that you have linked to your desire to lose weight. If you are in the headspace to change and wish to truly heal your relationship with food this year, I am going to encourage you to do one thing.

Action point: Get out a pen and paper. Yes, now! I’ll wait… Got it? Okay, draw a line across the paper. Now, write down a time-line of all of the diets and health-kicks you have been on. Underneath each diet write down how it made you feel (the good and the bad). Think about how it impacted on your relationship with food, your body and your friends and family. How long did you stick to the diets or ‘healthy lifestyle’. Once you are done, step back and ask yourself – how has dieting and the pursuit of weight loss served me?

Everyone deserves to live a life free from food guilt and body shame. You deserve to have a positive relationship with your first home – your body. You also deserve to enjoy meals with friends and dinners with your family without worrying about whether it will fit into your plan. CLN can help you achieve food and body freedom. Our Specialist Weight Inclusive Dietitian, Aoife McMahon, is trained in Intuitive Eating, Mindful eating and therapeutic methods to help you cultivate the skills you need to make peace with food. Reach out today and book a FREE Discovery Call. On this no-obligations call, we will discuss exactly how CLN can help you on your food and body liberation journey. Book your call using the button below –

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References:

Mann et al. (2007). Medicare’s search for effective obesity treatments: Diets are not the answer

Hazzard et al. (2021) Intuitive eating longitudinally predicts better psychological health and lower use of disordered eating behaviors: findings from EAT 2010–2018

Neumark-Sztainer et al. (2006) Ob*sity, Disordered Eating, and Eating Disorders in a Longitudinal Study of Adolescents: How Do Dieters Fare 5 Years Later?

Live a life no longer ruled by food.

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Dietitian predicts 2023 diet and weight loss trends

Each year I like to reflect on the biggest dieting and weight loss trends of the year. Well, I suppose ‘like’ might not be the right word here. The diet and weight loss industry is constantly reshaping the mould. They want to keep us hooked on seeking the true key to happiness, success and desirability. Their catch all solution? Lose weight! Diet! Make up for festive eating! Hit the gym until you can hit it no more!

Here’s the thing, the pursuit of weight loss rarely gives us the very thing it promises – long-term weight loss. Science shows that in the long-term, you are more likely to gain weight than lose it when you follow a diet or pursue weight loss. If you think about your experience and the experience of those around you who diet, you’ll know this to be true. The reason we, as a society, are still seeking the key to weight loss is because it doesn’t exist (and because billions is spent each year making us so insecure that we can be sold weight loss plans and pills with ease!). IF diets, health-kicks and weight loss pursuits worked, you’d only have to go on one once, and that would be it! There have been no long-term studies showing successful weight loss through dieting or going on a health-kick. What’s more is that these changes to your diet also come with an increased risk of eating disorders, disordered eating, poorer self-esteem and poorer psychological wellbeing.

”These changes to your diet also come with an increased risk of eating disorders, disordered eating, poorer self-esteem and poorer psychological wellbeing.”

The truth that dieting and weight loss pursuits do more harm than good is finally breaking into the mainstream media – and the weight loss industry knows this. Over the last few years we have seen a shift from overt promotion of diets to more subtle marketing. For example, in 2018, Weight Watchers rebranded itself as ‘WW’ alongside a tagline ‘Wellness that works’. We’ve also seen the rise and fall of Noom which claimed not to be a diet. There were no brand-spanking new weight loss plans in 2022 – no keto, intermittent fasting or 5:2 equivalent. What we did see, however, was a collection of familiar diets and ‘slimming’ groups trying to rebrand.

As we look ahead to the New Year, here are my 2023 diet and weight loss predictions:

More diets and weigh loss plans claiming they are ‘not a diet’
Diets moving away from weight loss as a promise
Diets rebranding as a cure-all for conditions e.g. Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and inflammatory-related conditions

Intuitive Eating expert Christy Harrison rightly states that the weight loss and wellness industry steals your time, money, well-being and happiness! Dieting and health kicks are also linked with more binge-eating and reaching for food in times of stress (Hazzard et al. 2021). While nothing is morally wrong with either of these eating patterns, it can leave you feeling exhausted!

Here’s how you can start 2023 free from diets!

Step 1: Get familiar with diets. The best way to manage a problem is to first know what the problem is! A diet is anything that tells you what, when or how to eat and often comes with a promise to change your body. If something says it is not a diet – check! Ask yourself whether it tells you what, when or how to eat. Does it promise to change your body? If yes, you guessed it – it’s probably a diet.

Step 2: Recognise that diets and the pursuit of weight loss do not serve you! Reflect on the diets and ‘health kicks’ you have been on. Did they give you what you wanted? It’s likely they did not deliver on their promise of long-term weight loss! If they didn’t, it’s not your fault. In fact, statistically you are the majority!

Step 3: Create a relationship with food no longer built on shame and shrinking your body! You deserve to take up space! You deserve to have a trusting relationship with your body, to connect with food and tune into your body’s hunger and satisfaction cues!

click hear to hear more! (I was on the Ease with Food podcast!)

One way to carve out a new relationship with food is through Intuitive Eating. Intuitive Eating is not a quick fix. If you hear siren sounds when you hear me say it’s not a diet, kudos! You’re starting to see diet culture for what it really is and view things through a critical lens. Intuitive Eating is very different from dieting. Intuitive Eating is a framework to help you truly connect with your body’s internal cues. It is a pathway to heal your relationship with food & your body. It helps you to stop relying on external rules telling you when, what or how much to eat and. It empowers you to cultivate a relationship where you trust your body to tell you when it’s hungry and when it’s full!

If you would like support to rebuild your relationship with food and/ or your body, I’d like to invite you to book your FREE Discovery Call with me. This is a no-obligations call where we can discuss how Centre for Liberating Nutrition can help you! Click the button below to finally heal your relationship with food in 2023!

Book my free discovery call!

References:

Mann et al. (2007), Medicare’s search for effective ob*sity treatments: diets are not the answer.

Hazzard et al. (2021), Intuitive eating longitudinally predicts better psychological health and lower use of disordered eating behaviors: findings from EAT 2010–2018

Make 2023 the year you heal your relationship with food & your body

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Christmas snaccidents: Try these 3 actionable Intuitive Eating steps TODAY!

Christmas is a time for family, connectedness, slowing down and enjoying delicious foods. However, with boxes of chocolates at work, festive meals out and food shops bursting with mince pies, gingerbread men and obscure flavours of crisps (prosecco flavoured crisps I’m looking at you!), it can be overwhelming to say the least! Eating more at social occasions like Christmas is part of a normal and healthy diet. Really, it’s true! I know it’s hard to believe when we live in a world which encourages kale and apple cider vinegar for the ever ambiguous and extremely broad goal of ”health”. However, our relationship with food is rich and definitely more complex than obtaining the right macros or calories from it.

What is intuitive eating and how can it help me survive the tasty sea of food this Christmas? Intuitive eating is a practice. It’s a way of transforming your relationship with food. It is not based on a complicated set of rules, and you do not need to count calories. In fact, intuitive eating encourages you away from external measures of regulating what you eat such as calorie counting. Intuitive eating encourages you to connect with your own body’s hunger and satisfaction cues. It cultivates a positive and peaceful relationship between you and food. And it has tonnes of science behind it too! There are over 120 studies published on the benefits of intuitive eating. Some benefits of Intuitive Eating include reducing binge eating, improving your relationship with food, not feeling so out-of-control around food, improved relationship with your body AND better overall psychological wellbeing. Sound good? Read on for 3 action steps to use intuitive eating over the holidays.

#1 Food Morality

What happens when you deny yourself that food you want? Let’s say, for example, one of your work colleagues brought in a box of your favourite chocolates. You’re already trying to be ‘good’ and you don’t need this extra temptation! What if I told you that how we think about the chocolates changes our relationship to them and can, in turn, change our behaviour. When we think of eating chocolates as being bad i.e. a ‘temptation’ and that eating chocolates is ‘being bad’ we inject shame into our relationship with the food. This is known as Food Morality. Thinking of foods in terms of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, things we ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t eat sets us up to feel guilty and shameful when we eventually do eat these foods (because name me one person who cut out their favourite food.. FOREVER). Action step – Next time you notice yourself thinking ‘I shouldn’t eat that’, take a pause – even just doing this step can help create space and some peace. If you can, I’d like to invite you to describe the food in terms of how it tastes, smells and its texture. This can provide the first steps to creating a relationship with food that isn’t based on measurements such as calories.

#2 Unconditional Permission to Eat

This leads me onto the second way Intuitive Eating can help you over the Christmas period. Once you have practiced using the senses to describe foods instead of Food Morality you can try Unconditional Permission to Eat. This Intuitive Eating principle encourages us to pick the food we truly want to have in any given moment. Think about a time when you wanted a specific food but you did not allow yourself to eat it because you were ‘being good’. Did you say to yourself ‘I’m not going to eat that?’ and then continue your day without a second thought? Or were you thinking about the food constantly? Did you sometimes try to eat anything but the food only to eat it in the end anyway? If you relate to this, please know you are not alone. Action step – Next time someone brings along a tasty food, state to yourself (in your thoughts or out loud) – ‘I have unconditional permission to eat this’. Then, ask yourself if you want to have the food. Do eat the food if it is what you want. Enjoy it, notice the tastes and textures. Notice how this changes your relationship to the food.

#3 Cope with your emotions with kindness

Eating more than you intend to can be incredibly stressful. Healing your relationship with food is not linear and it can feel messy and distressing at times. Feelings of shame and guilt fuel the binge-restrict cycle. If you eat more than you intended to, it’s important to practice self-compassion and kindness. Action step – Try an affirmation when you are feeling guilt or shame about your eating. Affirmations can feel silly and meaningless at first. However, you’d be surprised how much they can help over time! One affirmation I like is ‘My body is doing the best to support me with the knowledge and tools it has’, or ‘my body deserves to be nourished’. Affirmations are very personal – feel free to google them and make a list of your own to try out!

I’m so excited to share this FREE audio guided body scan with you! Use this scan to cultivate body trust and to tune into your body’s needs this festive season – including your hunger and fullness cues! To get your FREEBIE, click the link below!

Download my FREE body scan now!

Intuitive eating can transform the way you relate to food and your body. It is truly liberating; however, the journey is not always plain sailing! If you want support to live a life free from food guilt and body shame, then book a FREE Discovery Call. The Discovery Calls are run by me, Aoife McMahon, RD. It’s a no-obligations casual phone call where we can get to know each other and see how the CLN services can support you best.

Live a life no longer ruled by food.

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aoife@centreforliberatingnutrition.com

Why does sugar feel so addictive?

Do you ever feel like you just can’t stop eating sweet stuff? That you just can’t help yourself when there are biscuits in the cupboard? Perhaps you politely decline some chocolate from a friend, only to think about chocolate non-stop for the rest of the day? Sugary foods can really feel addictive, but what does the science say?

‘NOT SO SWEET – Sugar is as addictive as cocaine – learn how to kick the habit and boost your health’
The sun

Sugar is often touted as a toxic substance and is compared to addictive substances like cocaine. But where does this come from? Researchers have shown that sugar lights up the same reward centres in the brain as drugs do (Hajnal, Smith and Norgen, 2004). So, it would make sense that eating cookies is the same as taking drugs right? Wrong. This kind of dramatic messaging is used to get our attention. And it works! But no, snuggling up and eating chocolate buttons is not the same as taking cocaine (I mean, come on, we know this!). Let’s take a closer look at this study which is so frequently used to demonise sugar.

This study was done on rats. While animal studies can be useful to test out theories and possible reasons behind why something happens, these studies cannot be used to state a theory as fact. In this case, the researchers wanted to test their theory as to why people feel addicted to sugar, on rats.

The main issue, however, is not that it is an animal study, but how the researchers carried out the study. In this study the rats were starved while testing their response to sugar. Have you ever been starving? Perhaps you skipped a meal for a (disordered) diet? Or maybe you forgot to pack lunch on the way to the airport and there’s no time to stop for food. Have you ever experienced the incredible, all-consuming drive to eat whatever food is nearest, now! During these times your body increases your drive to eat food – especially food with a decent amount of fat or sugar in an attempt to make up for the missed meal! This is the state the rats were in.

Human studies have shown that yes, when we are deprived of food, our body can significantly increase our drive to eat (Polivy et al., 2005). One way our body may drive us to food in a food-scarce environment is by increasing the reward for food. In other words, our body might make the reward-response (read: brain trophy) for eating, much bigger. It makes sense then that brain trophies for eating sugary foods in rats or even in humans would be much greater when you are starving than when you have enough to eat. The reward might be so great that it’s similar in the brain to when someone takes a drug like say, cocaine.

Although magazines and other nutritibollocks-spreaders alike love to cling to the ‘sugar is toxic and addictive’ myth, it’s simply not true. The science is clear on this. In 2016 researchers looked into the studies investigating sugar as an addition. They concluded that the science does not support the theory that sugar is an addictive substance (Westwater et al., 2016).

So, the science is clear. That won’t stop some of us truly feeling ‘addicted’ to sugary foods or food in general. This feeling of addiction might make you feel out of control around food, like you can’t trust yourself. This feeling may be a sign that you have a disordered relationship with food. Disordered eating and having a stressful relationship with food is something that seems taboo in today’s society and as a result, it can be hard to find help. If this is something you would like help with, if you want a life no longer ruled by food then reach out. I’d like to invite you to book a free no-obligations discovery call with me. During this call we can discuss what troubles you about your relationship with food and/or your body and how CLN services can help you. If you want to truly transform your relationship with food book a free discovery call using the link below!

Book my FREE Discovery call now

References:

‘Sugar is as addictive as cocaine – learn how to kick the habit and boost your health’, The Sun 16/07/22 [Accessed 17/11/2022]. https://www.thesun.co.uk/health/19218889/beat-sugar-addiction-tips/

Hajnal, Smith and Norgren (2004). Oral sucrose stimulation increases accumbens dopamine in the rat.

Polivy et al. (2005). The effect of deprivation on food cravings and eating behaviour in restrained and unrestrained eaters.

Westwater et al. (2016). ‘Sugar Addiction: The State of the science’.

Live a life no longer ruled by food.

Book my free discovery call

With Centre for Liberating Nutrition

aoife@centreforliberatingnutrition.com

The Real Truth about Dieting

One thing that society does not talk about, and it’s something that the diet industry keeps well under wraps are the negative impacts of dieting. If dieting gave you what the dieting industry says it will give you – weight loss – then we would all go on a diet once, lose weight and that would be that. However, for the majority of people who diet that is not quite the reality. In this article, I am going to uncover the negative impacts of diets all shown by science (but kept super quiet by the diet industry) so you can walk away feeling informed and empowered.

First of all, let’s discuss what diets really are. Diets are defined as any restrictions placed on what you eat often with the aim of achieving a desired outcome. So essentially, a diet is anything that tells what, when and/or how you eat. Some diets are easy to spot such as the Atkins diet (it tell’s you not to eat carbohydrates), the Special K diet (it tell’s you to replace two of your meals with Special K – anyone remember that?!), diet shakes such as SlimFast tell you to only drink milkshakes for a set period of time and the list goes on. Other diets can be more subtle than that such as in the case of diet groups like Weight Watcher’s or Slimming World. They don’t tell you what to eat per se. However they both have elaborate points systems which, beside the fact you feel like you’re back in math class, they dictate exactly what you eat and even your relationship with certain foods that are labelled ‘bad’ as in the case of Syns. They are telling you what and when you can eat – they are diets. An even more subtle form of dieting are single diet rules. These are rules we may have learned from misinformation on healthy eating, previous diets or it may be something a friend or family member has said. An example of this is the no eating after a certain time rule. Anything that tells you what, when and/or how to eat is a diet and is giving you diet rules.

Diets can be so sexy and seductive, hey look if you just restrict the hell out of food you too can look like this airbrushed, photoshopped ridiculously happy woman. The reality? Guilt, shame, booming compliments as your body becomes smaller decreases and deafening silences as your body shape gets bigger. That’s not to mention the impact that disordered eating and preoccupation with food and diets can have on your relationships – family, friends etc. It kind of reminds me of smoking. Remember the days where smoking was the thing. It was cool, it was sexy it was seductive. It also causes cancer. However, there was such an allure and it was everywhere – the pubs, on the plane and even in the hospital! Go way back and it was prescribed in healthcare as a stress release! People may have heard the negative impacts of smoking but it was loudly drowned out by the attractive marketing right down to the peer pressure from friends. Now compare that with dieting.

Read on to find out the top 3 negative impacts of diets and restriction that the weight loss industry does not want you to know about.

Binge eating and eating disorders

Science has shown that the risk of binge eating and eating disorders actually increases following a diet. Ever heard of the deprivation mindset? Well, Deprivation mindset occurs whenever we make the intentional decision to restrict something. In the case of diets, the trigger for the deprivation mindset is the restriction of food in some way. It can set in before you even ever start the restriction. Do you ever wonder why you have the instant drive to have all your ‘forbidden foods’ in one go before you start the diet on Monday? Yeah, that’s thanks to the deprivation mindset. This encourages a binge-restrict cycle. This is a cycle which leaves you feeling out-of-control, shameful and exhausted. Sound familiar? Was it what was promised to you when you started the health kick?

2. Mental Health

While what you eat can boost your mental health, how you eat can contribute to poor mental health. How does it make you feel to stand on the scales in a group of strangers to get weighed? How do you feel when you are hungry after a day of ‘being good’ and come home and spot that packet of biscuits? Dieting is part of a vicious cycle. The more you diet, the more you obsess about food and your body which can impact on your mental health. Just a reminder here, science has shown that the most common outcome following a diet is weight gain. So in summary, you get lured into a diet with the before and after pictures, the promises of weight loss and happiness and what come out with is an increased risk of an eating disorder, poorer mental health. That doesn’t seem like value for money to me.

3. Diets prioritise weight loss over good health

The diet industry preys on our insecurities and tells us we can only be successful, attractive and happy at a certain weight. First of all – not true. Furthermore, severely restricting whole food groups and calorie intakes can have a very negative impact on your health in of itself. Take for example carbohydrates, many diets encourage you to restrict carbohydrate intakes, however, do they tell you how this can negatively impact on your body? Carbohydrates are the main source of fuel for your brain. No carbs = hanger, poor concentration and dipping energy levels. Carbohydrates are an important source of energy for your muscles and this is not just important for the bodybuilders out there. Nourishing your muscles well ensures you can do the things you enjoy whether that’s going for a walk, styling your hair (because your not going to tell me that doesn’t take a lot of arm work!) and doing day-to-day tasks too. Additionally, looking after your muscles and brain promotes healthy aging. All of these things are part of the basics to have a nourishing life. However, when we go on restrictive diets, we deprive our bodies of essential nutrition. Hmmm I’ll pass!

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If not dieting – then what?

So, you’ve identified that you don’t want to diet anymore. You’ve thought back to when you did diets in the past – the slimming groups and the no-carb crazes. Yeah sure, some of those times you may have lost weight but you’re stuck in this revolving door. You’re switching from either being REALLY strict and doing EVERYTHING to lose weight to being REALLY off dieting mode. There never seems to be an in-between! It’s exhausting! That’s not to mention how it makes you feel going through these cycles, the more difficult side to think about and the side of dieting society does not want you talking about. I’m talking about the negative thoughts that occur or get worse, the feelings of being a ‘failure’, failing another diet again. You may or may not have noticed how these feelings get worse after each diet – dieting has been scientifically shown to be linked with poorer body image.

Okay Aoife, then take me to the good stuff – show me the alternative! Okay, okay, but one thing to become accustomed to is moving away from instant gratification. Don’t worry, it’s not just you – we live in a world where everything is instant access you rarely have to wait longer than 24hours anymore from the point where you think of that new fish tank accessory to when you have that very thing within your grasp (okay I know, not relatable but I can’t stop treating my fishies). Instant gratification has not just crept into the weight loss industry but taken it by storm – think of before and after pictures, when do they make you want to lose weight? NOW! And do we care what method we achieve this weight through? NO! We want it NOW! How did we get here? And, when we think about it, do these methods ever actually really work? Science shows that the most common outcome from dieting is the very thing you are trying to avoid – weight gain.

With this all in mind – and trying to avoid the temptation to skip to the end – I am going to first show you the cycle you are probably very dizzy circling around – the diet cycle.

Let’s break this down. Think back to diets you went on and think about that time period just before you decided to embark on another diet. More often than not, there is a triggering event or thought process to which we think dieting is the only solution to. It may have been an upcoming event such as a wedding, there may be someone in particular who regularly passes judgement, or you may be at the point where you are sick of fatphobia (our society’s obsession with terrorising people in a bigger body and making them constantly think they need to ‘fix’ themselves in some way). Thing is, there is always an activating event or thought process that fuels the ‘pressure or desire to lose weight’. It’s important to note whether that pressure or desire is coming from a negative or positive place. When action you take is driven by a negative force at its core (and trust me, you’re not alone if this is the case) it can lead to a self-driving cycle of self-loathing. This my friends, is not where I want you to be and I don’t think you want to be there either. So, first call to action! Go grab a good old-fashioned scrap of paper and a pen or you can type this next bit into your phone – don’t worry, I’ll wait. Now, list all the impacts that dieting has had on you long term. Then create a second list (and this one may be trickier) of the reasons why you deserve more than to be in a never-ending diet cycle.

Well done you. Now we are going to discuss dieting and the deprivation mindset and its polar opposite: habituation theory.

Deprivation mindset occurs whenever we make the intentional decision to restrict a food. It can set in before you even ever start the restriction. Do you ever wonder why you have the instant drive to have all your ‘forbidden foods’ in one go before you start the diet on Monday? Yeah, that’s thanks to the deprivation mindset. To be fair, our body is doing our best and you won’t see me slander the wonder that is the human body. However, purposely having less food is slightly different than having no food back in hunter gathering times. Sure, back then it was crucial to have an incredible drive to food when the berries and nuts weren’t quite cutting it. Nowadays, you can pop round to the local and purchase pretty much anything – it’s the era of instant gratification! However, your body is a seriously complex being and if you tune into the right signals, you can work with it to build body trust and free yourself from the torturous diet cycle. Here at the Centre for Nutrition Liberation, all our care is rooted in body respect and tuning in to your very own metabolism, hunger and fullness hormones.

Second call to action – think about whether you are ready to demand a better way of living for yourself, to invest in you.

If you are interested in more, look at our care packages.