When you decide to go ‘on a diet’ you must be clear with what you’re doing and where to place your efforts.
This may sound rather simplistic but the concept of ‘dieting’ means something different to each person depending on what their current belief about food and dieting is.
Is this what dieting feels like to you?
This doesn’t mean there are multiple causes for weight loss…there is in fact only one thing that actually causes weight loss, and that is a caloric deficit regardless of the foods you choose to eat…this has been proven across multiple studies and even in pop culture films.
Missing this point could lead to focusing on the wrong ideas such as good vs bad foods, or eating at specific times of day, or specific styles of eating. All of these other techniques have something in common – they are forms of restrained eating.
Restrained Eating vs Calorie Restriction
A distinction needs to be made between Restrained Eating vs Calorie Restriction
Restrained eating is the act of abstaining or avoid certain foods, entire food categories, specific ingredients (like sugar) or eating in specific patterns that eliminate social flexibility.
BUT restrained eating does not address the point of caloric control. In other words, you could be a highly restrained eater with very few food choices you deem as acceptable or healthy but still overeat those foods such that you’re consuming more calories than you need.
Restrained eating also sets you up for major binge and crash episodes when you eat even just one bite of foods that you have arbitrarily labeled as ‘forbidden’. Retrained eating will rarely lead to long term sustainable weight loss success because of the crash and binge scenario is presents when you crack and finally have a bite of forbidden food…and we all eventually crack.
Calorie Restriction
Calorie restriction is simply eating less total calories than you burn in order to create a deficit that must be made up by your bodyfat. This is the only scientifically validated way to actually lose bodyfat. You can choose to eat whatever foods you wish within your calorie ‘limit’ for the day and still lose weight. This is a much different mindset from restrained eating because you are free to eat a variety of foods including ones that other restrained eaters might deem as forbidden.
Recent research has shown that restrained eaters will crack and binge after eating just a few bites of forbidden food, whereas this same event does not happen to unrestrained eaters.
The Good Food vs Bad Food Trap
This research also indicates that the more foods you designate as bad or forbidden the more likely you are to crack, crash and binge.
Setting up an extensive list of forbidden foods is not a solution to weight loss, weight maintenance and a satisfying relationship with food. It’s a recipe for obsessive compulsive disorder and never being truly in control of your eating.
Instead you should be striving to eliminate your forbidden food list all together and change it to a list of foods you eat more often, less often, and very infrequent.
This way all foods have their place, none are ‘bad’, and you can enjoy them without guilt.
In todays uncensored podcast we’ll discuss this research and show how restrained eating leads to a vicious cycle of shame, disappointment and guilt, which leads to more compensatory eating.
John
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