DietCategoriesNutrition

Diets Don’t Work: Why Restrictive Eating Plans Fail (and What You Can Do Instead)

Today’s guest post comes courtesy of Minneapolis based personal trainer and nutrition coach, Megan Schall. Megan’s been a distance coaching client of mine for a number of years (I write her training programs), but is someone I’ve referred many other clients to when they have any nutritional needs or questions.

She’s an awesome coach.

I’m always excited when I can provide sound and accessible nutrition based content on the site and I think you will appreciate Megan’s down-to-Earth approach and tone.

Enjoy!

Diet

Diets Don’t Work

According to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, the word “diet” has a few different definitions:

  • Food and drink regularly consumed
  • A regimen of eating or drinking sparingly so as to reduce one’s weight
  • To eat according to prescribed rules
  • (Added by TG) Doing everything in one’s power not to throw their face into an ax after avoiding carbohydrates for a week.

I’m guessing for most people, hearing the word diet brings up thoughts of the latter two definitions (excluding Tony’s brief interlude) – eating and drinking according to certain rules and/or with the aim of losing weight.

And when you have goals relating to your health, wellness, physical performance, or aesthetic appearance, what you eat is certainly a key player.

It would seem that if following a certain diet is going to help you reach your goals, you’d be motivated and excited to hop on board, yes? Shouldn’t it be easy to stick to a diet, see results, and keep it up?

Um, no.

If you’ve ever followed (or attempted to follow) a diet before – whether that means eating or avoiding certain foods, counting calories, points, or other numbers-based programs, or eating according to a specific schedule, you’re probably well aware of the challenges that come up.

Close Up Of Man Using Fitness Tracker To Count Calories For Post Workout Juice Drink He Is Making

(Of course, some people will need to follow certain “diets” to manage conditions or diseases, or for ethical or religious preference – being gluten free if you have Celiac for example, or avoiding animal products etc. For the purpose of this blog post, I am NOT referring to these kinds of diets. There will always be exceptions to any rule!)

So, why do diets routinely fail to produce results? And what can you do instead?

In my view, diets are problematic for several reasons:

1. Diets Are Inherently Restrictive and Create a Deprivation Mindset

As I mentioned, the very definition of the word diet is to eat sparingly or according to rules – to restrict your eating.

When you create restrictions or try to follow a rigid plan, your brain is in a state of stress and anxiety.

And when your brain is feeling stress and anxiety, it’s not just an uncomfortable place to be, but it’s also extremely difficult to make or sustain change.

Plus, restrictions – and the stress and anxiety they produce – usually result in a feeling of deprivation. Which creates more stress and anxiety.

Have you ever had the experience of trying to avoid a certain food, only to find that all you’re doing is thinking about the food you’re supposed to avoid?

Your brain is in a negative feedback loop: Restrictions  –> anxiety and stress –> deprived –> anxiety and stress etc.

When you’re caught in this negative head space, it’s a pretty miserable place to be. And being miserable does not bode well for forward progress or positive change.

2. Diets Take Away Your Autonomy

Diets are telling you what to do. No one likes to be told what to do. And when you are told what to do, what usually happens? You rebel and do the exact opposite.

Individuality going a different opposite direction

Having a sense of autonomy and control over your choices is key when it comes to behavior change that lasts. Giving away your autonomy to a diet plan is almost always going to backfire in the long run.

Not only that, you’re essentially outsourcing your hunger and fullness cues and food enjoyment to your diet plan.

You’re letting a diet dictate what you eat or when you eat or how much you eat, and it’s easy to lose touch with what your body really wants and needs.

This often leads to less enjoyment of food and eating, and you may feel unsatisfied even if you’re consuming more than enough.

It’s a lose-lose situation.

3. Diets Are Unsustainable

I think we’ve established that there isn’t a lot of enjoyment in a diet. And when there is no enjoyment, there is no sustainable, lasting change.

You might be able to follow a diet for a certain period of time – and you might even see great results – but eventually the restriction, stress brain, and lack of autonomy is going to catch up with you.

The whole idea of being “on” or “off” a diet makes it clear that these approaches are not built for the long haul. They may provide a quick fix, but they’re not helping you create long-term strategies that last.

5. Diets Don’t Factor in Your Real Life

This is a big one that I think gets overlooked: Diets are not meant for the actual life you are living.

Diet plans might work when conditions are ideal – when you don’t have a lot of other stressors going on, when your life is fairly stable and routine, and when you can put a lot of energy and effort into it.

But this is not reality for most people most of the time. Not everyone has the luxury to be able to make free range kale smoothies made with organic acai berries grown using unicorn tears and almond milk harvested from Jesus’s belly button.

Healthy Smoothie

You have jobs and families and responsibilities and crises…and that’s on a good day!

Real life is not counting calories or macros. Real life is work lunches and dinners with friends and family barbeques and birthday parties.

Diet plans don’t tend to fit seamlessly into real life. And if something doesn’t fit naturally into your reality, it’s not going to last.

6. Diets Ignore Underlying Factors

Another important consideration that diets miss are the many underlying issues that prevent people from making better nutritional choices, or really just implementing any change in the first place.

For example, if you’re chronically sleep deprived, it’s going to be extremely difficult to make the choices you want to make around food and eating, or movement, or whatever else in your life.

If you’re unable to manage stress appropriately, it’s going to affect those choices as well (not to mention make it hard to get good sleep! Cue the vicious cycle).

Diets work on the assumption that these other key factors of your health and well-being are taken care of, but at least in my experience, that is rarely the case.

Just like you can’t out-exercise a poor diet, you can’t out-diet poor sleep or stress management.

Addressing the foundational principles of good health needs to happen first.

Ok. Diets Don’t Work. Now What?

Perhaps you’re wondering:

If diets don’t work, what am I supposed to do? What are my other options?

I’m so glad you asked!

In a nutshell: You want to find what works best for *you* and fits into *your real life*, by developing skills and strategies that you can implement consistently over time and adapt as needed.

Instead of relying on a diet plan to tell you what to do, you can learn how to create your own path by building your toolbox and practicing the steps that move you in the right direction.

Learning and practicing the skills you need to get you where you want to go will be far more valuable -and get you far better results – than following a set of strict rules ever will.

  • Instead of trying to follow a certain diet plan, you could practice eating more slowly and noticing your own hunger and fullness cues.
  • You could try noticing and naming other factors that affect your food choices (sleep, stress, exercise etc.), and see if making changes in those areas is an effective way to change your eating habits.
  • Instead of counting calories or macros or points, you could experiment with what portion sizes work for you, and learn how to adapt depending on your hunger, appetite, or activity levels.
  • You could take note of how different foods make you feel or perform, whether that’s in the gym, at work, or just life in general.
  • Instead of restricting foods, you could practice enjoying meals without feeling guilty or overeating.
  • Instead of following a meal plan, you could develop planning and prepping strategies that fit into your life – so you can create your own meal plans that adapt to life’s ups and downs.

Meal prep concept. Glass airtight containers with cooked food veggies

Obviously, this all takes time and effort, and may feel like it will be way harder than being given a set of diet rules or a meal plan to follow.

But by making small changes over time, you can build the skills and strategies you need to make the best choices for you, your lifestyle, and your goals. (Hint hint: having a coach can come in handy!)

This approach is the opposite of an extreme diet: It’s sustainable, it gives you autonomy, it’s not restrictive or depriving, and it takes into consideration underlying issues and the context of your real life.

Ditch the diets.

Build skills that will last for the long-term.

Get results without hating life.

Dominate the world.

(Ok, I can’t guarantee that last one – but if it works…you’re welcome.)

About the Author

About the Author

Megan Schall is a certified nutrition coach and personal trainer located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Through her customized online nutrition coaching programs, Megan helps you clarify your goals and take action to address all aspects of well-being: nutrition, sleep, stress management, movement, mind-body awareness, and more. By building skills and routines that fit into your real life, Megan will help you make changes to your nutrition and self-care habits to meet your health and wellness goals and create sustainable, lasting results.
YouTube: HERE

 

 

 

CategoriesNutrition

The One Simple Trick that Can Change Your Eating Habits, Improve Your Food Choices, and Help You Lose Weight and Feel Your Best. No, Really!

Today’s guest post comes courtesy of Minneapolis based nutrition coach, Megan Schall. 

Megan contributed a guest post to the site a few weeks ago that ended up being very popular, and today she’s back with another gem that I feel can help a lot of people.

Nutrition can be a highly confusing and convoluted topic to write about. Countless books have been written saying fat is the enemy; no, protein is; oh, wait, actually, it’s carbohydrates. May you forever be sequestered to the depths of Mordor for having the audacity of partaking in an apple.

Asshole.

Facetiousness aside, Megan has a unique ability of recognizing that it is a mess out there, that information is uncannily biased (book sales over common sense!), and that, more often than not, it’s the simple things that most people need to focus on.

Enjoy!

Copyright: Evgeny Atamanenko

The Trick 👇 👇 👇

Spoiler Alert: This blog post is *not* going to be about how you must never eat bananas or how, if you stop eating after 6pm, all your dreams will come true (although, if either of those things are working for you – that’s cool! Keep doing your thing!)

This one trick is going to sound stupidly simple and maybe even too good to be true. It’s something you can do anywhere, with any food, and it costs zero dollars.

What’s the secret?

Eat slowly.

Yes, you read that right. It may not be sexy but slowing down when/how you eat can be a complete game changer.

If you’re thinking this sounds a little too simplistic or basic to be of any real use, I get it. But before you close this tab and go back to watching hilarious goat videos, let’s break down some of the reason why this works:

1. Eating Slowly Helps You Register Your Hunger and Fullness Cues

You’ve probably heard it takes about 20 minutes for your brain to register that you’re full.

When you take your time and eat more slowly, you give yourself a chance to actually feel when you’re no longer hungry vs. wolfing down everything on your plate.

If you eat super fast, it’s very easy to eat more food than you need.

via GIPHY

2. Slower eating = Better Digestion

Taking your time to relax, breathe, and chew your food well helps turn down the stress and activate your ‘rest and digest’ state. This means you’ll not only taste and enjoy your food more, but you’ll also experience better digestion.

Win-win!

3. Eating Slowly Can Improve Your Food Choices.

When you slow down and really savor your food, you can pay more attention to the taste and texture.

Try eating a processed “food-like” item slowly and mindfully and you’ll likely find it to be rather disgusting. Or you may discover certain foods make you feel not so great, while others leave you feeling like a rock star. That oatmeal you’ve been eating for breakfast for the last ten years? You might discover that you actually kind of hate it (true story from one oatmeal hating client).

4. Eating Slowly Can Be Done In Any Situation Involving Food1

You don’t have to follow a certain meal plan or eating window or count points or macros.

Whether you’re alone or in a group, you can eat slowly.

If you’re eating out (remember when we did that?) you can eat slowly. If you’re at home or traveling or eating while you’re working or driving, you can still eat slowly (although maybe try not to eat while driving).

But How?

Now that we’ve established that eating slowly is a good thing, how do you actually go about it? While eating slowly is a simple thing to do, that doesn’t mean it’s easy – a deadlift is a simple motion but takes a lot of practice and is always a work in progress.

Eating slowly is no different.

If you don’t believe me, I’ll challenge you to try a little experiment: At your next meal, start a timer. Eat normally. See how long it takes. (Don’t worry if it’s an appallingly small amount of time. This is totally normal.)

At another meal, set a timer for 20 minutes. Sit down at the table. Do not get up until your timer goes off. Try to make your meal last that long.

via GIPHY

It. Is. So. Hard.

Luckily, there are many strategies you can employ to make it easier to practice.

  • Setting a timer and trying to stretch out the number of minutes it takes you to eat is a great place to start. Maybe try adding 1-2 minutes to each meal.
  • You can put down your utensils between bites, or take a few deep breaths or a sip of water.
  • Put away your phone, turn off the TV, and sit down at an actual table. Eliminate distractions and focus only on your food. It’s much easier to eat quickly and mindlessly when you’re also.
  • If you’re eating with other people, try pacing yourself with the slowest eater (and if you’re eating with small children even better! Kids tend to eat quite slowly and can be great pacers).
  • Engage in conversation with your eating partners. Take a pause from eating to listen to what they say.
  • Pick a time when you know you can schedule a slow and mindful eating experience and go all in. See how long you can stretch it out.
  • Set an alarm on your phone or put a post-it note somewhere you will see it with a reminder to eat slowly.
  • Or, if you really want to go all in you could do what I did and get braces as an adult. Not necessarily the first strategy I’d recommend, but it is ridiculously hard to eat in general, much less to eat quickly.

Again, just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it’s easy.

In our world of constant distractions and noise, it’s really hard to sit for 15-20 minutes with no interruptions and just focus on eating. Our culture doesn’t exactly support the concept of slow and mindful eating, so it may take some practice and no one is going to be able to eat slowly all the time.

But it’s worth taking the time (literally) to give it a try and it’s something you can always return to if you feel your food or eating habits are getting off track. Even if weight loss is not your goal, being able to tune into your hunger and fullness cues and notice how food is affecting you is a useful tool to have in your tool belt!

If you’re trying to make changes to your nutrition habits, becoming aware of what’s happening when you are eating and how that is affecting your choices is a great place to start. And you can’t observe what is happening unless you slow down.

Try a slow eating experiment and you just may be surprised by the results.

About the Author

Megan Schall is a certified nutrition coach and personal trainer located in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Through her customized online nutrition coaching programs, Megan helps you clarify your goals and take action to address all aspects of well-being: nutrition, sleep, stress management, movement, mind-body awareness, and more.

By building skills and routines that fit into your real life, Megan will help you make changes to your nutrition and self-care habits to meet your health and wellness goals and create sustainable, lasting results.

Website: HERE                 YouTube: HERE

CategoriesNutrition

Set Yourself Up For Nutrition Success With a Kitchen Refresh

Today’s guest post comes courtesy of Minneapolis based personal trainer and nutrition coach, Megan Schall. Megan’s been a distance coaching client of mine for a number of years (I write her training programs), but is someone I’ve referred many other clients to when they have any nutritional needs or questions.

She’s an awesome coach.

I’m always excited when I can provide sound nutrition based content on the site and I think you will appreciate Megan’s down-to-Earth approach and tone.

I hope this will be the first of more submissions from Megan (hint, hint. nudge, nudge).

Enjoy!

Copyright: serezniy / 123RF Stock Photo

The Kitchen Refresh

When I first started distance coaching with Tony, I told him one of my goals was to be able to do a pull-up. So for the first several months my program included a shit-ton of upper back work (so. many. rows.) and core stability exercises.

After a steady progression from month to month, the day finally came and…

…I walked up to the bar (well, I walked up to a box underneath the bar because I’m short) and did my first strict pull-up, no problem.

via GIPHY

I admit I was a little nervous that it wasn’t going to happen! But looking back I realize I had no need to worry – Tony had set me up for success. His plan had created an environment where it was basically impossible for me to ‘fail’ because all the pieces were already in place.

This same concept applies when it comes to our eating habits and food choices: setting up your environment in a way that makes better choices easy and less great choices difficult (or impossible) allows you to conquer your nutrition goals.

Enter the Kitchen Refresh

The kitchen refresh is exactly as it sounds: You are going to clean out and refill your kitchen, updating it to support your needs and goals.

It’ll be fun, I promise!

This can be especially helpful right now, as most of us are spending a lot more time at home and thus a lot more time in or near the kitchen. As hard as it might have been to avoid treats in the office, having your kitchen a few steps away (or maybe your kitchen is your office now) makes it that much more challenging, not to mention the stress, boredom, and social isolation also affecting our food and eating choices.

Let’s walk through it step by step:

Step 1: Prepare

This is where you will make a plan for what will stay and what will go. Determine criteria that will make it easy to decide whether to keep or toss items – there’s the obvious ‘toss’ items (anything that has expired or that looks like a lab experiment), but otherwise this will vary for everyone. Defining clear guidelines for what you want to have around and what needs to go will make the cleaning out process much easier.

One strategy for doing this is to make a list of red, yellow, and green light foods.

Red Light Foods = Things that you know don’t make you feel good or are just too tempting if they’re in the house (this may include things like highly processed foods and/or certain ingredients, and anything that feels mentally challenging to have around or you find difficult to eat in moderation).

 Yellow Light Foods = Those that may not be the ‘best’ choice but that you are comfortable keeping around and can eat in moderation.

Green Light Foods = Items that make you feel great and help you reach your health and wellness goals (generally all whole/fresh foods, fruits and veggies, etc.).

(Note From TG: My “red light foods” are honey wheat pretzels, Cheez-Its, cereal, and those pills that Bradley Cooper took in that movie Limitless).

Step 2: Toss

Grab a trash bag (or several) and get to work. Read labels carefully. Remove red light foods and move yellow light foods to harder to reach areas or out of sight.

Put green light foods front and center.

This can also be a chance to clear out some of the extra “stuff” that might be hanging around the kitchen. Those 17 extra spatulas you never use? Give one to each of your friends, donate them, or find a creative new use.

Step 3: Restock

Use your green/yellow light foods to make a grocery list and stock up. Rearrange or reorganize so the “better” choices are also the easiest – keep fruits and veggies accessible and visible in the kitchen or fridge. Keep the items you use most often in easy to reach places.

BONUS Step 4: Upgrade

Is there anything that would make life easier when it comes to your food prep or kitchen organization?

  • A great blender that would make you happy to put together a post-workout smoothie?
  • A sharp knife and good cutting board to chop veggies?
  • Decent food storage containers?
  • A time machine to head back to November 2019 to invest in Zoom stock?

Investing in some equipment can make a world of difference, and now’s the chance to take inventory of what you might want or need.

Wasn’t That Fun?

Okay, “fun” may have been a bit of a stretch. The kitchen refresh isn’t like demo day in an actual renovation where you get to pile drive your old cabinets.

However, what WILL be fun is the better sense of control you’ll have over your eating habits.

Cleaning out the kitchen can feel overwhelming, and it certainly does not have to be done all at once. Start with one drawer or cabinet. Set a timer for five minutes and go to town. Maybe you keep a trash bag in the kitchen and get rid of whatever isn’t working for you whenever you come across it, or aim to toss one item a day.

Make a game out of it and get the whole family involved!

Use this as a guide, but feel free to be creative and find what works best for you.

One more thing to note: This process can be challenging if you have multiple family members who all have different wants/needs/food allergies etc.

Some compromises may need to happen – if your red light foods include ice cream and tortilla chips but your significant other or kids likes to have them around, are there compromises that make it work for both of you? (eg: buy smaller containers and keep them in the back of the freezer or out of sight.) It may take a little problem-solving to make sure everyone’s needs are met, but it can be done!

Just as your workout program helps you reach your fitness goals, the kitchen refresh is a great way to make your environment work for you and set yourself up for success. Give it a try and you’ll be well on your way to your first nutrition pull-up!

About the Author

Megan Schall is a certified nutrition coach and personal trainer located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Through her customized online nutrition coaching programs, Megan helps you clarify your goals and take action to address all aspects of well-being: nutrition, sleep, stress management, movement, mind-body awareness, and more. By building skills and routines that fit into your real life, Megan will help you make changes to your nutrition and self-care habits to meet your health and wellness goals and create sustainable, lasting results.
YouTube: HERE