Why Diet Mentality Is F*cking Up Your Progress
Allow me to begin by defining “diet mentality.” It’s the way you think about what exactly you have to do to get to your ideal weight. It is the thought process that those like myself have developed through our cultural obsession over being thin.
Thin is the ONLY way that you can be attractive and happy and successful, right? As ridiculous as that sounds to me now, there was a time in my life when I was thoroughly invested in that mentality.
Nowadays we have advertisements cluttering our feeds with another diet plan that will finally give you the body of a fitness model that you’ve always dreamed of! Do Intermittent Fasting and the pounds will just melt away! Don’t eat bananas and you’ll finally lose that belly! It’s absolutely insidious.
Yes. Insidious.
(I told you I was dramatic.)
But allow me to explain. Allowing this type of chorus to be heard by people over and over again for the last 70 years at an increasing intensity over each decade…how do you think that’s been working out for us? Has that shown a drop in obesity rates? Yeah, I didn’t think so.
Between the often contradictory messages through our media and our food supply being infiltrated by food science, which is responsible for designing an Oreo's flavor and texture profile to make people want to keep eating them, we’ve been fighting a losing battle this entire time.
Focusing on the “how” of weight loss isn’t quite as important as focusing on the “Why do I keep turning to food when I feel a certain way?” part of it. But that process takes a long time and a lot of patience, so the diet industry doesn’t want to sell it to you. There’s nothing sexy about working on your mindset.
It’s like the theory that there will never be a cure for cancer because cancer is such a profitable disease: If we teach a person how to stop overeating in the first place, we won’t be able to continue to sell that same person quick fix diet fads every 4-5 years. (Also, FUCK CANCER.)
So take a minute today and jot down everything that you believe you HAVE to do to lose weight. Email that list to me and I’ll tell you exactly why most of the things on it are not actually true, they just SOUND true to you: dana@revolution-within.com
If you’re anything like the way I used to be, you developed a belief system about losing weight that has roped you into a cycle of yo-yo dieting, assigning judgments of food like “good foods consist of protein and vegetables only” and “bad foods are forbidden to lose weight” and lists of what those good and bad foods are.
What if you decided to believe that food is just food and pay attention to the amounts instead of the types? What would happen if you allowed yourself to keep eating all of the same foods you’ve been eating for however long you’ve been telling yourself, “I have to stop eating like this,” and just pay closer attention to when you’re *actually* hungry and when you’ve eaten enough?
How f*cking cool would that be??
But see, that’s where it starts. Paying attention is the first step. When we stop paying attention, we let our habit brain take over while our clothes get tighter.
Then 20 pounds later (or roughly a stone and a half for our lovely international friends), we’re wondering how the hell we just gained back all the weight we’d lost the previous four months. And then the cycle begins again. It’s a mindf*ck that I’d bet you’d like to learn how to rewire.
Well. look no further…I’m here to really dive into it with you. Email me at dana@revolution-within.com to get started.
Love & hugs,
Dana