Transform a diet mentality to health-focused mindset (and feel happier)

Have you been on a tonne of diets but nothing’s worked? You might be fed up, but equally the thought of NOT being on a diet plan freaks you out – what if you stop dieting and then feel lost?

First I’m breaking down some common myths that keep you holding onto your diet mentality and show you how moving towards a health-focused mindset could be the best thing you could do for your health and happiness this year.

Did you know that over half of UK adults are currently on a diet – with women spending 17 years on average dieting? Each diet promises kilos or inches lost… the holy grail that if you finally achieve it, you’ll live happily ever after. Just one more diet is the biggest trap you can fall into.

Here’s the dieters dilemma:

You want to be thin, so you go on a diet, and maybe you lose weight.

But you experience cravings like never before of all the “forbidden foods”. You’re using all your self-control and willpower, but then at some point you snap!

You over-eat or full-on binge.

Eventually you stop the diet and gain the weight back.

You’re back at the beginning again.

So let’s break down some dieting myths that might have you holding onto those diets… 

Myth #1 Dieting is good for my health

Actually quite the opposite. In a review of studies, findings suggested that yoyo dieting (or weight cycling as they call it) is associated with an increased risk of death.

Dieting is also terrible for your mental health, it’s linked to eating disorders, causes stress and is related to feelings of failure and low self-esteem.

Myth #2 If I just had enough willpower

People fail on diets and then blame themselves – they feel like failures.  If only I could have more willpower, they say! Ever said that to yourself? Drop me a hell yeah in the comments below if that sounds familiar!

Unfortunately, you are fighting against your body’s natural survival mechanisms. I talked about it in this in more detail here, but basically when you go on a diet, your body thinks it’s being starved and does its best to make you eat.

From a psychological perspective, the minute you restrict something, the more likely you’ll want exactly what you’ve restricted, and if you cave in, you’ll feel super guilty (more on that in this video here),

Myth #3 Your BMI is important

It’s not. So many factors impact what you weigh right now – water retention, time of the month, time of day, hormones, amount of salt you’ve eaten.

Neither your weight nor your BMI reflects your body composition – in fact I know body building friends who are considered obese by the BMI standards, but are nothing of the sort.

More importantly, BMI itself was never created for clinical use.

It was developed in the 1830’s by an astronomer as a way to test whether the laws of probability could be applied to humans at the population level.

It was a statistical exercise, NOT for clinicians.

And, in 1998 millions of Americans became overweight / obese overnight. And that’s because the NIH (National Institutes of Health) changed the threshold in one day so that people previously in the normal range suddenly found themselves overweight.

Yes and to make it all the more suspicious the NIH is influenced by the International Obesity Task Force which is mostly funded by two pharmaceutical companies that make weight loss drugs.

You can’t make this stuff up.  They had a vested interest in telling millions of people they could now happily take these weight loss drugs and laid the ground work for the obesity epidemic.

So let’s not hold onto weight and BMI too tightly.

Myth #4 Lose weight, get healthy

This is controversial to say the least.

Can you believe that even though most health practitioners preach about weight loss, there is in fact not proven research that shows DEFINITELY that losing weight prolongs or improves life.

There is a host of research that in fact shows that weight loss is actually strongly related to increased risk of death (I’ve added some of this in the links below).

Please note that I’m not saying here that reduced weight causes early death, just that there is an association.

Dieting Mentality versus Health Mindset

OK let’s talk about the difference between a dieting mentality and a health focused mindset – we’ll examine the mindsets for food, movement and progress.

FOOD

A diet mentality counts calories or macros. You need to earn the right to eat food – asking yourself do you deserve it?

If you eat something “bad” you need to make up for it – perhaps through a punishing workout or not eating the next meal or even day. 

Food is viewed as the enemy.

A health focused mindset on the other hand is more like this: You eat when you’re hungry, and you focus on eating for satisfaction, enjoyment and fuel.

You don’t deprive yourself of foods.

This can freak people out: “if I don’t control what I eat, then surely I’ll just eat everything”.  But we find the opposite is true: take the restrictions away and you’ll find that food doesn’t hold the appeal.

So you can eat for enjoyment, without feeling guilty.

EXERCISE

A dieting mindset focuses on exercise as workouts – you want to burn the calories from your meals and you feel guilty if you don’t workout on a daily basis. When you miss a workout, you feel terrible and annoyed with yourself.

A health mindset will focus on how you FEEL when you exercise. It’s about finding movement that you enjoy – doesn’t have to be high intensity, it could be walking, yoga, stretches, or it could be something adventurous like rock climbing or water skiing. 

You are exercising because it lifts your mood and makes you feel energised.

PROGRESS

A dieting mentality focuses on:

How many kg did I lose? How do I look in these jeans?  How do I look to other people? What do others think of me. 

A health focused mindset does NOT focus on weight at all.

It’s all about progress and not perfection, increasing your trust in yourself around food, letting go of “eating failures” and learning to recognise your hunger and fullness cues.

I hope that you can clearly see the differences between a dieting mentality and a health-focused mindset.

If you’re interested in discovering your eating personality style, then check out my 3 minute quiz here - do you have a dieting mindset?