BODY AND SOUL: Diet be Damned!
At last - a non-diet approach to natural weight management!
By Jane Keighley.
If you don't let yourself have anything you'll just have more cravings.Australians spend over $500 million dollars each year in their quest to lose weight. The weight-loss industry is booming with profits growing hugely each year, but the irony is, we are also ‘growing’ considerably each year. The ‘perfect body’ that weight-loss giants promise is more and more elusive. We are slimming more than ever, but getting fatter than ever – where are we going wrong?
By dieting in the first place, says 38-year-old Karla Cameron, founder of life after diets. “Dieting makes us pre-occupied with food and our weight. Dieting causes overeating. Overeating causes weight gain and weight gain causes further dieting, which is how we become repeat-clients. As consumers, we are never ‘finished’ dieting,” explains Karla.
So to achieve a healthy body weight and emotional freedom, the ‘diet mentality’ has to stop. Karla talks with us about her non-diet approach.
No-one ‘diets’ anymore so what’s the big deal?
The word ‘diet’ is a politically incorrect term now. No-one likes to say the word or even admit they are doing ‘it’. Many women claim they don’t diet instead regularly detox or follow ‘healthy eating plans’.
However, you have to look for the underlying intention. If the intention is to manipulate your body-weight or shape by any kind of food restriction - it doesn’t matter what label you put on it (food combining, low GI, Atkins, The Zone – it’s a diet.
What’s wrong with dieting?
We’ve been conditioned to believe that to lose weight, we simply go on a diet, grit out teeth with willpower to handle the hunger involved, and increase our exercise until the kilos melt away, which can happen in the short term.
But as consumers, we are never ‘finished’ dieting. And when most women eat something that isn’t on their diet, they blame themselves for their lack of willpower and ‘failing’. It’s not our fault we ‘fail’ our diets. Overeating and losing control with food is a natural, healthy, biological survival response to any period of food restriction.
By restricting food when we diet we are very efficiently training our bodies to gain weight!
Dieting also makes us preoccupied with food – messing with our minds – which is unfortunate as it is opposite of what we set out to do when we diet.
Allow the little things back in for every now and then.What is a non-diet approach to weight management?
The life after diets approach is a non-traditional and holistic approach to the whole let’s-go-on-a-diet-to-lose-weight issue.
A non-diet approach means you give up restricting food forever. You start to allow all previously forbidden foods back into your life, and get back in touch with your hunger. You learn to recognise and respond to your body’s needs.
A non-diet philosophy respects the fact that your weight isn’t the real issue that needs addressing. Your ‘weight problem’ is a manifestation of unresolved emotional and self-esteem issues. Food isn’t the problem.
In the long term, the amazing paradox with this approach is that when we train our bodies to ‘know’ that no food is off limits and we can have whatever we want, whenever we want it, food gradually loses its magical appeal. We stop lusting over it and start to become ‘unobsessed’ with food and our weight. This is like getting back to nature. It’s a natural process, we just need to step out with our diet mentality and allow it to happen.
But If I stop dieting, won’t I gain weight?
This is the biggest fear anyone has when considering a non-diet approach, and it was my biggest fear too. I thought with no restrictions in place, I’d lose all control, eat everything in sight and never stop gaining weight!
In my own experience, I can tell you that, believe it or not, the opposite happens. When I stopped dieting, I also stopped the knee-jerk response of overeating. And when I stopped overeating, I stopped gaining weight. And when I stopped gaining weight, I was truly able to take a step back and start listening and responding to my body’s needs.
Giving up all forms of dieting is not dissimilar to jumping off a cliff. It’s a giant leap of faith.
What you will come to realise is that dieting is actually false control. In order to develop a healthier and happier relationship with food and our bodies, going with the flow and eating spontaneously should be our goal.
Of course, if you’ve been dieting for years and suddenly stop doing that, you will naturally be driven to eat lots of high fat, high sugar, highly processed food (or whatever it is that you’ve been restricting for years) until you move through the process and reach a point where your body just ‘knows’ nothing is off limits anymore.
In the long term, after this process is thoroughly worked through, you will start to crave lighter, more nutritious, satisfying and energy-giving foods and become much more attuned to what your body is trying to tell you. You will really enjoy self-nurturing.
For more information on a non-diet approach contact Karla at www.lifeafterdiets.com.au
