Ever try a new program to get/stay healthy that advertised itself as a way to: stop dieting and make a lifestyle change? Or helping you stay on track with clean eating?
Your best of intentions are likely still leading you down a familiar path. Can you spot a diet in disguise?
The $70 billion diet industry is smart. It knows women have gotten increasingly fed up with diets.
So those that promote restrictive-based approaches to nutrition/weight loss have rebranded in order to stay relevant and keep the cash flow coming in strong.
Out with the “diets” in with the “lifestyle change” (or “flexible dieting” or “clean eating”).
But don’t be fooled by the shiny new packaging.
Many diets are masquerading as a “healthy lifestyle” and are resulting in the same damaging effects as when they were just called “diets.”
I find this super sneaky and dangerous because these programs are advertising under the misleading disguise of promoting health. Same beast, different name. No matter what this new breed of diets calls themselves, they’re all part of diet culture.
Over the past several decades, ALL long-term studies have shown that diets (determining what/when/how much you eat off of an external source) are NOT an effective path to health long-term because they don’t lead to sustainable health-promoting behaviors.
Instead, diets and those seemingly harmless “healthy lifestyle change” programs can do more harm than good, leading increased risk for:
- Disconnection from the body’s internal hunger/fullness cues and instincts about food
- Disordered eating or eating disorders
- Future weight gain, slowed metabolism, and the likelihood of obesity
- Reduced self-esteem, confidence, self-worth
- Negative body image
- Binge, overeating, and emotional eating behaviors
- Digestive issues and leaky gut
- Increased stress, anxiety, depression, guilt, preoccupation with food
- Yo-yo cycle that some people spend their *entire lives* in—robbing them of their time, money, mental energy, health, & happiness
Diet culture steals your money, your time, your health, your happiness, your sense of worth (I could keep going), but watch out for diet culture in its many disguises!
Be extra cautious and suspicious and break out your BS detector to recognize diet culture showing up in all its forms.
If any person or any program markets itself using words/phrases like:
- Approved
- Allowed
- Calories
- Challenge
- Cheat Meal
- Clean Eating
- Cleanse or Detox
- Count
- Deserve
- Earn
- Flexible Dieting
- Good/Bad Food
- Macros
- Low Fat / Carb
- Meal Plan
- Off Limits
- Quit Sugar
- Skinny or Guit-Free Recipe
- Track
- OR If they/it applauds weight loss (even as a way to get “healthy”)
- OR If they/it limits what/how much you can eat
- OR If they/it evokes feelings of guilt, shame, or failure
- OR If they/it measures success by pounds lost
Call it what it is: a diet.
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck…it’s sure as hell not a flamingo! 🙂
I’m ALL for making changes in our eating and lifestyle that make us healthier, feel good, and align with our values, but I’m NOT for companies or people trying to sell what has been proven to cause damage to people but in a disguise.
Luckily – there IS another way to look and feel your best. A scientifically proven more effective way.
This other way isn’t talked about much, because there’s really no money to make in it!
Once you learn and embrace it, it embodies you. You never have to rely on anyone else, any other program, any counting, any measuring, any tracking, etc. to effortlessly live your healthiest life ever in your best body ever.
If you’d like support actually getting healthy, feeling amazing, eating foods you love, and rocking the only life you got – I would absolutely love to help you. Click here to set up a free strategy call!
