My fabulous trainer friend from Fitness Jones Training and I hopped on his FB live to debunk some diet myths that keep a lot of people stuck, and share a fresh take on more sustainable and effective ways to approach health.
This is part 2 of 2 – click here for part 1 🙂
2nd Diet Myth That Drives Me CRAZY!
There’s a certain, specific amount of calories, or fat, carbs, and protein that not only your body needs the same of – every day – but that some person, calculator, or app on your phone can determine it.
Nooooooooooo.
Wanting to know how many calories your body needs can be really tempting if you’re looking to lose weight or tone up, because we’ve been told something super basic: weight loss = eating less calories than you burn.
I’ve worked with so many clients who initially came to me eating less calories than they were burning in a day, easily (like 800-1000 calories) and were so frustrated and confused why the weight wasn’t just melting off. Can you imagine, or maybe you’ve been there yourself, constantly feeling deprived, dissatisfied, hungry, and tired all the time, and STILL not seeing progress?
Ultimately, “calories in and calories out” is a fundamentally flawed view. One big reason is that this theory treats all calories equally, regardless of source, and calories are not all created equal. Your body does not metabolize and process all calories in the same way.
Our bodies are not simple machines, like water this plant this much, keep it in the sun, and it’ll thrive.
There’s no magic formula. I can promise you no program, diet, magical or best nutritionist in the world knows what your body needs better than your actual body.
That’s because we’re wildly complex, emotional beings and are all 100% unique inside and out, and that includes what, when, and how much food our bodies want and need to thrive.
It changes on a daily basis due to a number of factors like stress, sleep, activity, hormones, the condition of our gut, chronic dieting and nutrient deprivation, thyroid and adrenal complications, and more!
But lucky for us, we’re all born with all of the wisdom we need to fuel ourselves efficiently and effectively, these built-in natural portion control mechanisms to ensure we’ll never just keep eating and eating and eating.
What happen is with years of controlling, restricting, coping, binging, and all-out-food and diet craziness by becoming dependent on listening to some thing or someone else telling us what/when/how much to eat, it blocks this inborn intelligence, and instead of listening to our wise and all-knowing bodies, we make ourselves crazy.
I get it, it can feel scary to go from having a specific set of rules to follow to know if we’re doing well and staying on track…to trusting the very body you feel has been failing you and letting you down with all of your healthy eating attempts in the past.
But I promise you, everyone still has that voice in them. Your body still instinctively knows exactly what it needs to thrive and naturally guide you to and easily maintain your happiest healthiest weight while barely even trying. You just have to get back in tune with it.
You’ll see how your body is naturally hungrier some days, and naturally not as hungry other days. It all balances itself out on a never-ending continuum. That’s why like if you eat really healthy all week, you might find yourself eating tons of food on the weekend. Your body is trying to get back in balance with what it needs.
Your body is smart, it’s there for you, it’s on your side, it wants you to be healthy, but it can only perform with the ingredients you give it.
So before you think about joining Weight Watchers one more time, doing another round of Whole 30, or finally trying that Keto-thing…
And instead of thinking of your past tried/failed attempts, how your willpower wasn’t strong enough, that you’re too lazy, or that you need to try harder next time…
Know that YOU are not the problem. You’ve just been given the wrong information.
Realize you are a success for thinking about this now before you waste any more time and money going down the rabbit hole and putting your life on hold.
Remind yourself pursuing restriction-based weight loss moves you further away from the opportunity to make peace with your body and learn how to better listen to what your body is telling you, keeping you trapped in a cycle of unhappiness and stress.
There are so many other WAY more effective and enjoyable ways to find happiness, health, success, self-worth, confidence and your happy & healthy weight.
Check out the video version (not the best quality but the audio is pretty good if you even just want to listen as you drive like a podcast!)
Here’s a timing breakdown:
~:30 How Me & Ren Met/About Me
~6:00 1st Diet Myth That Drives Me CRAZY
~10:00 Natural Weight Set Point
~13:00 How Survival Mechanisms Factor In
~15:00 Not Becoming a Diet Statistic
~17:00 2nd Diet Myth That Drives Me CRAZY
~22:00 Natural Hunger, Signals, & Cravings
~26:00 How to be Sustainable with Healthy Habits
