If you’ve ever been on a diet and felt trapped in a cycle of doing well and then ruining it again and again, then you’re not alone! I speak to clients all the time who say they’ve “failed” at every diet they’ve tried, sometimes for as long as 40 or 50 years. It’s heart-breaking when someone has been trapped inside this cycle of feelings for so long. Let me share some secrets to weight loss without dieting by breaking that endless cycle of failing diets.
A compulsion to diet is not a natural part of us but something which stems from dissatisfaction with our own bodies; an initial feeling of negativity spurs us on to want to change.
The problem is that trying to combat feelings of negativity by going on the diet cycle usually adds to the problem because it’s so easy to stumble when dieting – perhaps because we’re so obsessed with the food we’re trying to give up or because we’re expecting the numbers to change on the scales at a quicker, unhealthy rate.
Many studies have concluded that restraining eating often results in overeating and I covered the reasons behind this in a previous blog – but what this causes is a constant diet cycle of failure. The way the diet cycle works means that unless you’re very strong-willed, you’re set up to fail from the start.
What I’ve always done is encourage people who want to achieve weight loss is to try to find the cause of overeating and then tackle it so that their mind is better on track to reach the goal of who they want to be.
The body will always be set up so that hormones make you feel more hungry when you don’t eat enough; we can’t change this – what we can change is the way we approach losing weight. If dieting isn’t the answer then where do you start?
In this case, of course, I would advocate mind-over-matter; let your unconscious do the work, retune your mind to get it away from thinking about food, work towards creating good habits, not dwelling on and feeling negative about bad ones.
Positive goals are important, too – think about the person you want to be, who you want to see looking back at you in the mirror. This is always a more positive thing to focus on than the numbers on the scales because in truth it’s the person in the mirror, not the numbers on the scales, which is most important to us.
I hope this advice helps you to break away from the diet cycle that’s doomed to fail in the long term.
4 thoughts on “Weight Loss Without Dieting: Breaking Out of The Failing Diet Cycle”
Im comfort eating ,looking after my sick husband 24/7 is so stressful
That must be really hard Madeline. Just don’t forget that you matter too, so even if you can find 5 minutes now and again just for, it will give you a small sanctuary from what I know is a very difficult life to live. Sending hugs x
I have been off all diets for a year now and not loosing weight nor putting it on, I have at least 40kg to loose and at times do not know what I am doing wrong ?. I have started to count calories again and then think maybe I need to go to SW/ WW both of which just sent my stress levels with regards eating – off hte charts it was all that I thought of daily and do not want to get back into that cycle . So my question is do I need to start at the beginning with Slimpod coaching again – I listen to all the pods every night ??
That destructive diet cycle – my mother put me on a diet when I was six years old after commenting adversely on my weight and shape. I wanted (as every six-year old does) to please my mother, for her to love me without any conditions attached. I am still on that diet cycle. I am 72 years old, and my mother has been dead for 35 years, and I still want to be the daughter who deserves her unconditional love.