Apart from for nutrition, why do you eat?
Why do you choose the foods that you choose?
Why in a restaurant do you make the menu choices you do?
Why do you shop in certain aisles and in certain areas of a supermarket and not in others?
Why do you choose red grapes over green grapes?
Why do you choose steak over chicken, pizza over pasta, or yellow peppers over red peppers!
People generally make their food choices based on their feelings and emotions as opposed to the nutritional content of something. Even if you are 'eating healthily' you will still go for something you LIKE against something you don't LIKE.
Therefore your choices are made on emotion...
Now most overweight people use food to change their emotions, for example, if you have had a bad day at work and you want to cheer up, or you have had a row with someone and want to show them, or you are in trouble or worried about something and just for a split second want to eat something to make the pain go away. Food, therefore, is used to change the emotional state. It might only be for a very short period and then you might feel bad afterwards but the intention in eating the food was always based on emotion.
A lot of us use food as a sticky plaster for other problems in our lives. I used to use food to help me with stress, loneliness, comfort and boredom. Te problem was never the food, the problem was I was stressed, lonely, needed comfort and was bored!
So when people diet they take the food or some of their food choices away for a while. Of course, they reduce their weight which is great! The problem is that as well as taking away the calories you have also taken away their solution to when they have a problem and therefore they suddenly need WILLPOWER!
Willpower is only a finite resource and eventually you run out and you run back to the solution which was food and then the weight returns.
Therefore never blame the food, you need to realise what you are using the food for on an emotional level and then deal with that problem instead.
I worked with a lady for six months that felt trapped in her life, she wasn't happy with her relationship at all but because of money etc she couldn't walk away from the relationship and hence was using food as a solution to that.
Now when she dieted she kept commenting she was smoking more than ever! And of course she was then using cigarettes as a solution and then the huge credit card bill turned up which was yet another attempt at a solution.
So trying to take away the solution to a problem is never a good idea, taking away the bucket under a dripping roof is only going to make the carpet wet! therefore fix the roof...
Now I know this sounds like I am saying diets don't work and that is exactly what I am NOT saying! What I am saying is if you can deal with WHY you overate and the emotion around that then you will find the diet that you choose is much more successful as you will be HAPPY to be slim as you won't need food as a sticky plaster for other issues in your life.
All diets work! All diets that reduce calories down to less than your body needs will result in weight loss, the question therefore is why do so many people fail on diets...
And the answer is because the diet and food was never the real problem.
Have a great week and cya Saturday!
Mike ;-)
