An Alternative to Dieting For When You're Done Counting Every Calorie
Written by Isabel Vasquez RD, LDN
Fad diets have been popular for decades if not centuries. They typically involve food rules and restrictions based around eating fewer calories, counting macros, and more.
Whatever the restrictions are, they’re usually intended to help dieters lose weight and feel better physically and emotionally. Many people seek out a diet plan hoping to feel more confident, practice healthy eating, reduce their consumption of foods they deem “unhealthy”, and improve their body image.
If you’ve dieted, you’ve probably experienced the highs and lows that come with it. Initially, you may feel super motivated, excited, and proud if you stick with the diet and lose weight. However, over time, pretty much everyone’s ability to follow these strict food rules fades and most people regain the weight they initially lost.
Over decades of chronic dieting, morale can become quite low and you may be ready to seek out an alternative to dieting.
I’m here to let you know an alternative does exist–a true way to ditch diets for good and finally improve your relationship to food and your body. No more diet books, but a science-backed way to improve your health and your relationship with food.
In this blog, I’ll explain the problem with diets, what the alternative to dieting is, and how to spot sneaky diets. Let’s dive in!
What’s the problem with diets?
If diets worked, there wouldn’t have to be so many of them. It seems like every season there’s a new trending diet. From current fads like keto and intermittent fasting to prior trends like Atkins, there’s always a new diet promising to change your life for the better. But the reality is, diets don’t work. Here’s why.
They’re not sustainable
Our bodies were not meant to sustain restriction over long periods of time. When you diet, you are essentially manipulating your food intake and disregarding your body’s cues.
For example, a 2020 study in Public Health Nutrition used internet search trends for recipes for five popular diets to conclude that dieters sustained these diets for an average of only three to five weeks.
You might be thinking “If I just relied on my body’s cues, I’d eat ice cream all day everyday! I have a problem with sweets.” There is an opportunity to find a balance of honoring your body’s cues and practicing gentle nutrition to incorporate nutritional variety, which we’ll get to later in this blog.
That being said, when you restrict your food intake, your body might sense a threat. It doesn’t know whether it’s a voluntary restriction or a famine. So, it does all it can to protect you.
It increases your secretion of hunger hormones and focuses your mind on food in an attempt to get you to eat and give it what it needs.
Essentially, it puts you in a scarcity mentality.
All of that is stressful physically and mentally. At the end of the day, maintaining this is not sustainable. It is not that you lack willpower, it’s just that a diet is not sustainable.
They don’t lead to long-term weight loss
Despite diets being sought out for weight loss, they don’t actually promote long-term weight loss! Most people regain the weight they lost on a diet within a few years and many regain even more than they initially lost.
A recent meta-analysis (CW: stigmatizing weight language) found that within five years, more than 80% of weight lost from dieting was regained. And a 2007 study in American Psychologist found that ⅓-⅔ of dieters regain the weight they lost and more from dieting.
Our approach here at Your Latina Nutrition de-centers weight as the most important indicator of health; everyone has a different healthy weight for them. However, it’s important to recognize that weight loss isn’t even a long-term result of dieting.
Accepting this can bring up some grief. It can be really hard to accept that the thing you thought would help you lose weight just won’t do that.
Maybe it’s time for a weight-neutral approach.
They degrade your relationship to food and your body
Unfortunately, not only do diets not work, but they can actively cause harm.
They promote an intense focus on your weight and the “problems” with your body, which inevitably leads many people to have a really tough relationship with their bodies.
A 2020 study in Cureus found that dieters have similar responses as those experiencing prolonged semi-starvation, bulimia nervosa, and anorexia nervosa. They had pronounced depression, emotional distress, and irritability. They also noted that dieters were also more likely not only to restrict food, but to binge, partly because of their disconnection from their body’s cues.
Diets cause many people to have really harsh judgments about their eating habits. Eating cake may turn from “this is bad” to “I am bad for eating this.” You are not a bad person for eating cake!
Consider that your relationship with food and your body begins in childhood. It is not just your own dieting experience, but that of your family that can influence your relationship to food and your body.
For example, you may remember your mother chronically dieting or commenting negatively about her body or your body. That typically sticks with you for decades and shapes how you feel about your own body.
All that to say, ditching diets and recognizing the way they’ve harmed your relationship with your body can bring up A LOT. It can spark reflection on these relationships–with yourself, your body, food, your family–that you hadn’t dove deep into before.
They make you feel like the problem
Lastly, diets make you feel like you’re the problem, which further degrades your self-image.
They make you feel like you failed when you stop the diet.
In reality, the diets are what fails. They just don’t work. That is not a reflection of you, your willpower, or your worth.
Alternatives to dieting
Practice intuitive eating
When you’re ready to ditch diets, learning about a non-diet approach is a great place to start. Even if you’re not ready to dive in and practice it, just understanding the basics is helpful. Curiosity is key!
For many people, intuitive eating is where they begin.
Intuitive eating is a non-diet, research-backed, weight-inclusive approach to nutrition that focuses on listening to your body’s unique needs and cues when nourishing yourself rather than a diet’s rigid rules or restrictions. (Check out this blog for a deep dive into intuitive eating.)
It is made up of ten principles that help you free yourself from dieting, acknowledge the harm it has caused you, and reclaim your relationship to food, movement, and your body.
It requires a big mindset shift that takes time, but it is so worth it.
Focus on health-promoting behaviors
You may be wondering, “If I stop dieting, won’t my health go down the drain?”
That is a valid fear! But one of the ways diets affect our thinking is they make us think all-or-nothing thoughts.
The goal of a non-diet approach to health is to find a middle ground. You can incorporate cake AND veggies. You don’t have to swing from one end of the pendulum to another, from sticking with the diet’s rules to bingeing on every piece of “junk food” in sight.
Working on health-promoting behaviors helps you stop focusing on numbers like calories and weight and instead, focus on how your body feels and what it needs.
Sometimes, that may require limiting certain foods for medical reasons, like if you have a food allergy or intolerance.
For example, if you’re lactose intolerant, then limiting dairy products like milk or cheese may help you take care of your health and feel good in your body. However, eating these foods would not make you a bad person. You get to choose how you nourish yourself, guilt-free.
Health-promoting behaviors you can incorporate without obsessing over numbers include:
Finding joyful movement, physical activity that you enjoy and enhances your life
Having good sleep hygiene through adopting a sleep routine and getting to bed at a reasonable hour
Managing stress through things like journaling, walking, talking with loved ones, going to therapy, setting boundaries and whatever else works for you
Incorporating nutritional variety by including carbs, proteins, and fats into your regular eating pattern. Incorporate fiber through whole grains, fruits, and veggies. The goal is to do this without labeling foods as “good” or “bad”
Staying hydrated, through water, sparkling water, fruits, veggies, milk, or other hydration sources you enjoy
Improve your relationship with your body
Since diets wreak havoc on your relationship with your body, why not try tending to this relationship?
Rather than continuing on a journey of hating your body and trying to “fix it”, maybe it’s time to start cultivating respect and even some appreciation for your body.
In a society that constantly tells us all the things that’s wrong with our bodies and the latest product or diet that we should buy to correct these “problems”, it can be really tough to have a better relationship with your body.
You can start small. Maybe you cultivate appreciation for the simple things like the fact that your body keeps you breathing without you even having to think about it. You may choose to write a letter to your body just releasing your feelings about it.
If you want the support of a book, I recommend The Body is Not An Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor, which also has a companion workbook.
How to spot diets masquerading as non-diets
When you’re ready to ditch diets, it can be tricky to differentiate between true non-diet approaches and ones just pretending to be non-diets.
In recent years, diets calling themselves diets have become less trendy. Now, in part because of a more widespread movement towards body positivity, companies are changing how they market diets.
They may focus on psychology or say that you can eat whatever you want on their plan. However, they are still diets.
Here are a few ways to spot a diet:
It focuses on or promises weight loss. Intentional weight loss requires manipulating your food intake through restriction or rigid exercise, which is a hallmark characteristic of a diet.
It requires controlling your food intake. Following a rigid meal plan or using a red/yellow/green light system for food is still controlling your food intake. It disconnects you from your body’s cues, just like any other diet.
It labels foods as good or bad. When you’re told to cut out certain foods or restrict your intake of them, it is a diet. Of course, for some medical conditions, alterations to your eating can help with disease management, but it can be approached in a more gentle way. This good or bad food labeling perpetuates your fear of certain foods and leads to ongoing mental turmoil and self-degradation when you eat the foods. It will also increase your risk of bingeing on them.
It focuses on numbers like calories or macros. Centering these numbers is typically used to control your intake and set a maximum for the day. This, too, disconnects you from your body’s cues and is a set of externally imposed rules.
It increases your stress level. If you notice yourself feeling down, degrading your body or your eating habits, becoming obsessive about food, or judging yourself based on your ability to follow the plan, that may be a sign it is a diet. A non-diet approach is intended to help you practice self-care and self-compassion.
Final Thoughts
Diets don’t work, and they can cause physical and mental harm. A non-diet approach has the potential to greatly reduce your stress levels and improve your relationship with food and your body. To start, you may want to look into intuitive eating and focus on health-promoting behaviors.
Be patient with yourself on your journey of ditching diets. It takes time, self-compassion, and self-exploration. It is a beautiful process that comes with ups and downs, but I haven’t heard of one person regretting it yet.
For education on how to ADD nutrition to your favorite Latine cultural dishes, make peace with food, and focus on your health without dieting, join our nutrition library for just $27/month.
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