Anti-Dieting

#health_above_all_nutrition

Now that we have a full month of 2021 behind us, many of us are wondering whether we can truly stick with some of the most common resolutions we make. You know the ones—lose 10 pounds by going on a strict diet, stop eating “junk food”, etc. If those were some of your new year’s resolutions, my advice would be to make new ones, instead. Why? Because it’s exactly those kinds of resolutions that set us up for failure in the long run. We see it as a black and white endeavor, with no spectrum of gray.

Did you know that the number one predictor of weight gain within 5 years is going on a diet? That’s probably the main reason “anti-diet” is so popular now. There’s much evidence -based data that shows that all foods fit in an everyday nutrition regimen. Yes, I mean it. You can have sweets and carbs and other so-called “taboo” foods.

The rationale behind this is that when you purposefully exclude certain foods or food groups from your intake, your body begins to crave them and then, when a trigger of sorts, like the loss of a job, or some other difficult time in your life happens, you reach for those “taboo” foods with reckless abandon. You eat them in quantities that can make you sick and you may also think that since you blew your “diet” anyway, you may as well eat everything in sight. Sound familiar? This is where the diet mentality fails every single time.

I encourage clients to, first and foremost, tune into their bodies. I work with them to find out what foods make them feel good and what quantities satisfy them. That’s a big hurdle to overcome. People are so tuned into what they have heard or read about, with regard to what they should or should not eat, they don’t even know what they want.

For example, many people reach for salads, and really like them, but realize they don’t actually feel satisfied after eating them. They also exclude fats from their foods, not realizing that fats are key for feeling satiated because they are slow to leave the GI tract. When you add fats to your daily intake, you will naturally and biologically, eat less and feel fuller longer.

Some of my favorite ways of adding fats to my daily intake is by scooping Carrington Farms MCT Powder into my morning coffee and using the different flavors of their family of delicious oils when I make my favorite dishes or dress my favorite salads. Those are just some of the ways I help my body feel satiated and stay at a healthy weight, year after year.