Diet culture has led us all to think that weight loss only occurs with great sacrifice, willpower and restriction.
It would have you believe that you need to say goodbye to all the things you enjoy and do a complete lifestyle overhaul to have any chance of success. If it feels comfortable and easy then clearly you aren’t doing it right.
And, based on your own experiences you would be right to think this was the case. Because when you followed *insert popular fad diet here*, gosh it was hard but you lost 10kg. You were probably exhausted by the end of it, sick of cooking separate meals to the rest of the family or missed dining out with your friends but hey – that number on the scale!
But then over time, old habits started to creep back in. Maybe you didn’t feel like the meal plan option for dinner one night so just had the regular family meal, or social events kept popping up that didn’t align with the prescribed eating regime. Before you knew it you were no longer following that diet and the weight crept back.
The truth is drastic weight loss measures aren’t sustainable.
We all eventually reach breaking point and give up. It’s not because we don’t have what it takes to succeed, it’s because fad diets put unrealistic expectations and constraints upon us. They tend to be very prescriptive and apply a ‘one size fits all’ approach. When we are feeling highly motivated it’s amazing what we can force ourselves to do, no matter how difficult or unpleasant. But when that motivation wears off then a ‘diet overhaul’ can be all too difficult to sustain. Those very comfortable habits that we are so used to (i.e. our regular eating patterns) seem so much easier and that’s generally what we end up doing.
If you have a busy lifestyle you may even feel frustrated because as much as you want to lose weight you’re possibly putting it off because it all seems so daunting and you know you don’t have the time to commit to it.
So what if I told you that you don’t need a complete dietary overhaul to achieve weight loss?
You can be just as successful, and most likely healthier, if you adopt small changes. Instead of changing everything all at once, it is much more sustainable to just change those parts of your diet that have the biggest impact. It could be swapping your coffee of choice or changing up your afternoon snack option. It certainly doesn’t need to involve cutting out whole food groups.
What that change needs to be is going to be different for each person – after all we are all individuals and there really isn’t a magic bullet or cure-all when it comes to weight loss.
So where to start?
Most of our food choices are driven by habit so the first step to working out what needs changing is to be fully aware of what those habits are. Keeping a food journal for a few days is the best way to kick start any dietary change. So many of my clients find that having to write it down makes them put more conscious thought into their food choices which in and of itself can lead to healthier foods making their way into the diet.
Once you’ve recorded for a few days reflect back and look at how you did with some of these dietary habits:
– How many days did you eat fruit?
– How many meals did you have vegetables with?
– How many glasses of water did you drink?
– What other drinks do you have regularly?
– Did you skip any meals?
– How many times did you eat out or have takeaway foods?
Then choose 1 of these habits to improve at a time.
For example, you thought you drank 1 or 2 full cream lattes per day. But once you started recording it you realised it’s more often 2 or 3. So your first step could be either winding it back down to 1 coffee per day and have herbal tea for the other 2 hot drinks, or you could try switching to skim milk and still have the 2 or 3 per day. Focus on that 1 habit for a week or two before taking on another change to your diet.
Overtime you’ll accumulate a whole lot of incremental changes. Within 6 months your diet will most likely look very different to what it does now but you didn’t have to undertake any drastic measures to achieve it.
If you’re tired of extreme fad diets, and ready to build some healthy habits, our team are here to help! Our dietitians can provide individualised nutritional advice to help you achieve your goals without restriction!
