Demotivating Diets

After spending the last 6 blog entries helping to build motivation, I thought it would be fitting to pause and talk about what is demotivating, in order to defend against it.  In short, diets!   
                                                                                                                              

If you want to stay motivated, avoid the “diet trap”.  Here are some of the ways people find themselves caught in the diet trap:

·  Restrictive dieting causes loss of muscle tissue which results in a lower metabolic rate and subsequent weight-regain as fat and, of course, another diet to take care of that.  How depressing.

·    Restrictive dieting causes physical and emotional feelings of deprivation which result in rebound overeating leading to weight regain, often with more besides and, of course, another diet to take care of that.  Back to deprivation, round 2 (and 3, and 4 . . . )

·    Individuals whose eating is driven by underlying emotional issues are given a diet as the "solution" to their “problem” but cannot seem to stop overeating and, of course, try “harder” to diet.  What a “failure”.

Any one of these common scenarios, or a combination of any or all of them

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Weight regain

(often with a little more besides!)

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Lower self-esteem

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More weight gain or more dieting with increased intensity to do better

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More diet “failure”

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INCREASINGLY LOWER SELF-ESTEEM

In short, dieting wreaks physical and psychological havoc.    

                                                                                                                       

And if those typical cycles aren’t demotivating enough, weight-loss does not necessarily translate into better health.  That’s really depressing!  In fact, diets are often harmful to your health.  Accumulating evidence shows that dieting does more harm than good.  Glenn Gaesser, Ph.D., author of Big Fat Lies, presents a convincing review of the overwhelming evidence that in the effort to produce weight-loss, individuals actually increase their risk for earlier mortality.  Talk about demotivating. 

So if you struggle with motivation, stop dieting.  Diets sabotage motivation and are harmful to health.  In the next blogs I will discuss the futility and harm of dieting. 

If you need to lose weight realize the ironic truth is you need to eat to lose weight.

Living free of diets,
Diane Preves, M.S., R.D.

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