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Dieting Rarely Works. 95% of all dieters regain their
lost weight within 1 to 5 years; one reason being that
dieting can force your body into starvation mode, slowing
down and affecting long term damage on your metabolism.
Yet we keep dieting…
- Americans spend more than 34 billion dollars a year
on dieting and diet-related products.
- It is estimated that 40-50% of women are trying
to lose weight at any point in time.
- One recent study revealed that 91% of women on a
college had dieted. 22% dieted "often" or
"always". (Kurth et al., 1995)
- Researchers estimate that 40-60% of high school
girls are on diets. (Sardula et al., 1993, Rosen &
Gross, 1987)
- Another study found that 46% of 9-11 year olds are
sometimes or very often on a diets. (Gustafson-Larson
& Terry)
- 81% of 10 year olds are afraid of being fat. 51%
of 9 and 10 year old girls feel better about themselves
if they are on a diet.
- If today's mannequins were actual human women, based
on theoretical body fat percentages, they would probably
cease to menstruate.
- Men constitute 40% of those exhibiting Binge Eating
Disorder.
- 35% of "normal dieters" progress to pathological
dieting. Of those, 20-25% progress to partial or full-syndrome
eating disorders.
Stop Dieting and Start Practicing these 10 principles
of Intuitive Eating...
10 Principles of Intuitive Eating
- Reject the Diet Mentality
Throw out the diet books and magazine articles that
offer you false hope of losing weight quickly, easily,
and permanently. Get angry at the lies that have led
you to feel as if you were a failure every time a
new diet stopped working and you gained back all of
the weight. If you allow even one small hope to linger
that a new and better diet might be lurking around
the corner, it will prevent you from being free to
rediscover Intuitive Eating.
- Honor Your Hunger
Keep your body biologically fed with adequate energy
and carbohydrates. Otherwise you can trigger a primal
drive to overeat. Once you reach the moment of excessive
hunger, all intentions of moderate, conscious eating
are fleeting and irrelevant. Learning to honor this
first biological signal sets the stage for re-building
trust with yourself and food.
- Make Peace with Food
Call a truce, stop the food fight! Give yourself
unconditional permission to eat. If you tell yourself
that you can't or shouldn't have a particular food,
it can lead to intense feelings of deprivation that
build into uncontrollable cravings and, often, bingeing
When you finally "give-in" to your forbidden
food, eating will be experienced with such intensity,
it usually results in Last Supper overeating, and
overwhelming guilt.
- Challenge the Food Police
Scream a loud "NO" to thoughts in your
head that declare you're "good" for eating
under 1000 calories or "bad" because you
ate a piece of chocolate cake. The Food Police monitor
the unreasonable rules that dieting has created .
The police station is housed deep in your psyche,
and its loud speaker shouts negative barbs, hopeless
phrases, and guilt-provoking indictments. Chasing
the Food Police away is a critical step in returning
to Intuitive Eating.
- Respect Your Fullness
Listen for the body signals that tell you that
you are no longer hungry. Observe the signs that show
that you're comfortably full. Pause in the middle
of a meal or food and ask yourself how the food tastes,
and what is your current fullness level?
- Discover the Satisfaction Factor
The Japanese have the wisdom to promote pleasure
as one of their goals of healthy living. In our fury
to be thin and healthy, we often overlook one of the
most basic gifts of existence--the pleasure and satisfaction
that can be found in the eating experience. When you
eat what you really want, in an environment that is
inviting and conducive, the pleasure you derive will
be a powerful force in helping you feel satisfied
and content. By providing this experience for yourself,
you will find that it takes much less food to decide
you've had "enough".
- Honor Your Feelings Without Using Food
Find ways to comfort , nurture, distract, and
resolve your issues without using food. Anxiety, loneliness,
boredom, anger are emotions we all experience throughout
life. Each has its own trigger, and each has its own
appeasement. Food won't fix any of these feelings.
It may comfort for the short term, distract from the
pain, or even numb you into a food hangover. But food
won't solve the problem. If anything, eating for an
emotional hunger will only make you feel worse in
the long run. You'll ultimately have to deal with
the source of the emotion, as well as the discomfort
of overeating.
- Respect Your Body
Accept your genetic blueprint. Just as a person
with a shoe size of eight would not expect to realistically
squeeze into a size six, it is equally as futile (and
uncomfortable) to have the same expectation with body
size. But mostly, respect your body, so you can feel
better about who you are. It's hard to reject the
diet mentality if you are unrealistic and overly critical
about your body shape.
- Exercise--Feel the Difference
Forget militant exercise. Just get active and
feel the difference. Shift your focus to how it feels
to move your body, rather than the calorie burning
effect of exercise. If you focus on how you feel from
working out, such as energized, it can make the difference
between rolling out of bed for a brisk morning walk
or hitting the snooze alarm. If when you wake up,
your only goal is to lose weight, it's usually not
a motivating factor in that moment of time.
- Honor Your Health--Gentle Nutrition
Make food choices that honor your health and tastebuds
while making you feel well. Remember that you don't
have to eat a perfect diet to be healthy. You will
not suddenly get a nutrient deficiency or gain weight
from one snack, one meal, or one day of eating. It's
what you eat consistently over time that matters,
progress not perfection is what counts.
Excerpted from www.intuitiveating.com
and the book, Intuitive Eating, by Evelyn Tribole,
MS, RD and Elyse Resch, MS, RD, FADA
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