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Dec 25

Try this New Year’s resolution: ditch the diet – Jackson Hole News&Guide

Diet Comments Off on Try this New Year’s resolution: ditch the diet – Jackson Hole News&Guide

This is the season when holiday festivities and diet talk are in full swing.

Just skip lunch so you can indulge tonight.

Ill burn 500 calories at the gym to earn my food.

Im bringing the gluten-free, dairy-free, refined-sugar-free cheesecake ... despite having no medical reason to and, if were honest, you really prefer the real thing.

And the most common diet talk: Oh, screw it, Im going to eat whatever I want. Ive already lost control over my holiday eating. Ill just be good on Whole 30, Paleo, Keto (whatever) beginning next week.

The language we use transitions from indulging in December to restricting in January.

Even though weve heard that diets dont work, we continue to pursue them year after year.

Why? Because diets do work, just not long term.

We continue to be enticed by diet culture promises because most of us do lose weight, experience health improvements and feel better on a diet, albeit, more often than not, temporarily.

Thus, for many of us, dieting could be part of the health epidemic problem instead of the solution.

This obsession with thinness is driving us crazy, said Glenn Mackintosh, principle psychologist at Weight Management Psychology. And the only tangible result most of us see from endlessly battling our bodies is the number on the scales rising over time. Even the few who achieve the ideal arent immune to the madness and live in fear of weight gain.

And dont be fooled into thinking your next food plan or watching what you eat in the name of health isnt just a diet in disguise. To diet, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is to restrict oneself to small amounts or special kinds of food in order to lose weight.

As we start a new decade, give yourself a long-lasting gift: a way out of diet culture and its defining, controlling characteristics of willpower and restriction. Reliance on these strategies is why diets dont really work.

Willpower is not the problem

Do you rely on willpower to be good and avoid the refined sugar dessert but end up sneaking back into the kitchen for a slice?

Do you opt for a healthified version of dessert but find yourself full but still dissatisfied?

Or do you white-knuckle it to avoid carbohydrates all day and then crave them and feel out of control to the point where you overeat them at night?

Resisting your favorite foods lasts only so long. Why?

First, its not because you are a willpower weakling.

We dont have an endless supply of willpower, defined as restraint or self-control. Its limited. We start with a full tank of willpower in the morning and then use it up throughout the day making decisions and choices. Notice when we usually give in: later in the afternoon and evening, or on the weekends after a week of being good.

And what are you using willpower for? To restrict forbidden foods.

Nothing amplifies a craving like restriction.

Its human nature to want something even more when were told we cant have it, said Barbara J. Rolls, Guthrie chair of nutrition at Pennsylvania State University, in a 2018 article in Shape magazine.

It feels like self-punishment. Restriction just says No, you cant have it, or just one.

Perhaps you label yourself addicted to sugar but wonder why the plate of holiday cookies on the kitchen counter just isnt a big deal for your husband?

He eats some. And moves on. It seems unfair.

Little evidence is found to support sugar addiction in humans, researchers Westwater, Fletcher and Ziauddeens found in their study Sugar Addiction: The State of the Science. It appears that the bingeing, the addictive-like behavior, occurred due to intermittent access to sugar.

Restriction breeds obsession

Still not convinced that restriction isnt the way to wellness?

Conducted by the Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene at the University of Minnesota, the study illuminated the problem with restrictive eating.

Researchers selected 36 men who were deemed in good physical and mental health for a nearly yearlong study that was broken into four parts. The first three months the men were fed a normal diet of 3,200 calories, and the next six months they were fed a semistarvation diet of 1,570 calories; During the next three months, the rehabilitation phase, the men were fed between 2,000 and 3,200 calories, and in the last eight weeks they were given unrestricted access to food.

What did the researchers learn by measuring the physiological and psychological changes?

Mainly, the men became obsessed with food.

They fantasized about food and read cookbooks and looked up recipes. Their lives became food-centered. They reported feeling depressed, fatigued, irritable and apathetic on a 1,500-calorie diet. A few men sneaked food and were removed from the study ... because they failed.

Its how we feel and act after a few weeks on a diet, yet we still engage in restrictive eating 75 years later.

Upon Googling 1,500 calorie diets, I found a list of current nutritionist-designed programs touting the benefit of such a program, though we know that semi-starvation the class which this was labeled in the study doesnt work.

Food deprivation, no matter how diet culture labels it, is distressing. Period.

So when your friends, family members and social media influencers engage in diet talk, trying to convince you to jump on the latest healthy eating plan, my No. 1 tip is: Dont.

Tanya Mark is a mind-body nutritionist and body image movement global ambassador. Contact her via tanya@tanyamark.com; follow her on Facebook.com @TanyaMarkMindBodyNutrition or Instagram at @TanyaMark.

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Try this New Year's resolution: ditch the diet - Jackson Hole News&Guide

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