The Strong[HER] Way | Healthy nutrition and habits for moms, routines, strength training for women

7 diet pitfalls to avoid and strategies to help you be more successful

• Alisha Carlson • Episode 185

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Hey beautiful friend! 

 Are you tired of the endless cycle of diets that promise the world but leave you feeling frustrated and defeated? 

 you're SO not alone! 

Join me for this week's podcast  where we dive into the real talk about ditching the diet mindset for good.

I'm here to empower you with practical tips and strategies to break free from the diet trap while still achieving your health and fitness goals. 

From emotional eating to navigating social situations, we'll cover the common pitfalls that can sabotage your success and how to overcome them with confidence.

It's time to redefine what it means to be healthy and feel amazing in your own skin. 

So grab your favorite beverage, cozy up, and let's embark on this journey together towards food freedom and a healthier lifestyle. 

 Tune in now and let's revolutionize the way we approach health and wellness, one Strong(HER) Way episode at a time.

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2. Get your personalized plan using my holistic non-diet approach
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Speaker 1:

Hey friends, welcome back to the Strong Her Way to Eat, move and Live. Here we talk all things food freedom, fitness and life transformation, helping you heal your relationship to food, exercise your body and yourself. Now, before we dive into today's topic, talking about some of the top reasons I've seen diets fail and how they tend to fall short, I wanted to let you know that you can download your free version of the Strong Her Way app at either Google Play or in the App Store for Apple. Now, inside the app, you're going to find access to the Mindful Eating Project to help introduce you to a more mindful and intuitive approach to nutrition, so that you can finally ditch the diet roller coaster, untie yourself from the scale and start to experience complete food freedom. You're also going to find access to a tracking part of the app as well. Now, this differs in most tracking that you've probably done, because we're not counting calories, we're not counting macros. Instead, we're really kind of looking at what you're doing is it working, what part of it's working, and then, what tweaks do you want to make so that you can start to kind of navigate and coach yourself, so to speak, through those different changes. So if you want to grab that. It's totally free to download. Just head to your app store. The Strong Her Way. All right, now let's go ahead and dive in Now.

Speaker 1:

I have seen many reasons that diets can and have have failed in the past and statistically they say it's upwards of 80 to 90 or even 95% of diets that are going to fail within or after two years of weight loss. One of the keys for people who tend to lose weight long term is that they don't approach food through a dieting lens. They really take the time to work on their relationship to food, to themselves and to their bodies. Diets often fail for several reasons, and the effectiveness of a diet can vary from person to person. Here are some of the common reasons I've seen why diets may not work for everybody. One is unrealistic expectations. Now, so many diets out there are promising quick fixes, dramatic results, really leading people to expect rapid weight loss and feel like something is wrong if they're not consistently losing one to two pounds a week. However, sustainable and healthy weight loss is a gradual process and usually it's even slower. Sustainable and healthy weight loss is a gradual process and usually it's even slower than that supposed healthy weight loss of one to two pounds.

Speaker 1:

Weight loss is also not linear. It can maybe look like no weight loss for a period of time. Then maybe you have a big drop, then you plateau, then you gain some of it back and then you lose some again. It's kind of like that graphic that I've seen floating around Instagram that shows, on the one hand, what we think success should look like, with kind of the straight linear line to the goal, versus what success actually looks like, which is much more like a tangled ball of yarn. But over time, that tangled ball of yarn is still consistently moving in the direction of our goals.

Speaker 1:

Unrealistic expectations around weight loss or really any result that we're going for can end us feeling frustrated and often super disappointed, maybe even leading us to just abandon, in this case, the diet or the weight loss goal, or fill in the blank with any goal that you're going for altogether. Sometimes it really is just a matter of needing to check in with your expectations and challenge them, be willing to change them as needed, and adopting more of a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset is going to go a long way in this. A few weeks ago we did an episode on the growth versus the fixed mindset, but just to kind of recap, a fixed mindset is very much focused on the result. It oftentimes can feel like we're putting a ton of pressure on ourselves. We have a really hard time seeing failure as something that can be useful and, in short, we end up making our failures mean something bad about us versus the growth mindset really takes the approach of the power of not yet. So this is a little bit more input focused, meaning we're focused more on what we're doing and less on the result, and really using our failures as stepping stones to get to our success. This is a radically different way to approach your goals. That's really going to help you actually learn the skills that you need to learn, develop the tools that you need to have and to be able to consistently work towards your goals without burning yourself out.

Speaker 1:

Another reason diets tend to fail is that they can be very restrictive in nature, and so diets that are overly restrictive in terms of food choices or caloric intake can be really difficult to sustain in the long term. Especially if people are feeling deprived and restricted, this can oftentimes lead to increased hunger, increased cravings and kind of those binge eating like episodes. Restrictive diets can also be socially isolating and may not end up providing all of the essential nutrients that your body needs in the first place, which can be all be reasons you may decide not to stick with a diet for the long term, or why you would find it so hard to actually stay with it past a week or two, or even three. Again, you want to find a way of eating that allows you to still enjoy your favorite foods on occasion without being completely controlled by them. Learning that it's okay to feel deprived at times is also a useful skill. It really goes back to that whole delayed versus instant gratification. Having an urge kind of pop up for something and delaying it for even five or ten minutes really teaches your brain that you don't have to always cave to cravings and that it's not an emergency if you're not always eating the things that you want to be eating. Again, this is definitely a useful skill and it will go a long way overall in your relationship to food. So, in part, we really just want to look at eating in a way that allows for variety and for you to still eat foods that you enjoy, while learning how to manage your emotions and your brain around food and approaching it in a way where deprivation and restriction are not the predominant emotions that you are feeling around food. Those two emotions by far usually only lead us to that sort of binge and restrict cycle. We kind of deprive and we restrict ourselves to the point that we can't handle it anymore and then we go the complete opposite, end only to circle back to that deprivation and that restriction.

Speaker 1:

Another reason I see diets fail is they are short term in focus. Now, I don't know about you, but I used to approach diets really with the goal in mind. Right, it was like, okay, I'm going to lose 10 pounds and then, once I lost the 10 pounds, I would kind of subconsciously or maybe very intentionally go back to eating and living the way that I was before. Now some diets are designed for short-term results. Again, you know, I don't think that staying on the same diet that I was on for figure shows. That wouldn't have been healthy for me to do long periods of time. So that was something that I did for a very short period of time for a very specific goal.

Speaker 1:

Another way we see this is if you're trying to lose weight for a wedding or a special event or something like that, where we end up losing the weight, but then we go all the way back to our old lifestyle habits and, unfortunately, every time we lose weight only to gain it back. It makes it harder to lose weight the next time and oftentimes we end up gaining even more weight back than what we lost. So, without having a focus on long-term lifestyle change, of course, weight gain or weight regain rather, is going to be common. I would also add that when we're in it just for the results, that fundamental shift to our self-identity hasn't really had a chance to catch up either, meaning we still identify more with the version of us at that higher weight. This is sort of like a thermostat, so you're always going to act in accordance with the self-concept or the self-identity that you believe to be most true about you. This really is where the sneaky self-sabotaging behaviors come in. This is oftentimes why you might find yourself getting to a goal only to end up sabotaging yourself to get you to gain the weight back. It's because your identity or the way that you view yourself doesn't really match up yet with the person, with the woman that's at the smaller weight or the less weight. So this is where doing that internal work on the way that you view yourself, what you believe to be most true about you and think about you, is also so important because we want to reset that thermostat to align with the goals and the results that you are wanting to create.

Speaker 1:

Another area where I see diets falling short is the lack of individualization. Not every diet is going to work for every person. Our bodies are super unique and factors such as metabolism, genetics, even preferences and lifestyle play a significant role in our overall weight management. This one size cookie cutter approach is not going to address individual needs and preferences. Not to mention, oftentimes, if you are going it alone, you may not even know where to start or what to tweak or how to change things up.

Speaker 1:

It can kind of feel like you're just trying all of these things, throwing spaghetti at the wall to find what works, and then you get frustrated. Wall to find what works, and then you get frustrated. Not to mention, there are so many different things out there regarding nutrition. Oftentimes they're the complete opposites, contradicting themselves. We don't even know like what's right and what we should be trying. One diet might tell you to eat this, while another one says to avoid it at all costs. This is where I think working with a coach really can be super helpful. They have different experience, they have kind of that outside perspective and they can help you individualize your nutrition so that it really is working for you and help you kind of guide the different things that you're trying, so it doesn't feel like you're having to sort through all of that information on your own. Plus, when we are taking a more individualized approach to nutrition, we're going to be getting a lot more variety in our foods, which our body needs to ensure that it's getting all of the essential and necessary nutrients as well.

Speaker 1:

Another area diets fall short is the emphasis on dieting versus a lifestyle change. Now, I truthfully think that dieting is really kind of a mentality and a way that we approach food. It's again, it's a lot of times that it's laced with the restriction and the deprivation. Maybe it's the short term. It can also be heavily leaning on and focusing on the results rather than really focusing on the things that are 100% within your control, which are your behaviors.

Speaker 1:

Diets are oftentimes perceived as kind of a temporary measure to achieve a specific goal. However, for sustainable weight management, it's essential that we adopt healthy lifestyle habits and the mindset to really support those changes we want to make that can be maintained over the long term. So, for me, I really didn't know that I was dieting until I was standing in my kitchen in 2018, feeling super defeated, super discouraged and just thinking like why can't I get this? Why does this healthy lifestyle feel so hard and really and truly like? It's because it was revealed to me that I was dieting and I was calling it a lifestyle. It was the way that I was approaching exercise and food that made it more of a diet and less of a lifestyle. This includes really looking at making permanent changes to your eating pattern, physical activity, sleep and really just overall behavior. Again, this really goes back to that whole identity shift that needs to happen as well for long-term success. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of working on what you believe to be most true about you, or how you view yourself, to get that to align with where you're headed and the goals that you have.

Speaker 1:

Psychological factors can be another reason that diets end up failing. There is so much emotional and psychological stuff that's happening around food for all of us. We all have food stories. There's the stress, the emotional eating, maybe an unhealthy relationship to food. All of these things can significantly impact the success of a diet. Diets that do not also address these underlying issues are likely not going to lead to lasting results. This is where you work on your relationship to food while you're working on establishing new habits or behaviors around food, but ultimately it really stems from us working on a relationship to understand ourselves and why we do what we do around food, so that we can solve those issues on a deeper level and not just continue to solve those issues or those problems kind of at that surface level. Once you begin to work on this area, many of the unwanted behaviors around food just kind of start to resolve and slowly just sort of disappear. It's almost like they take care of themselves. This is really the difference of solving things on a symptom level versus getting to the root cause.

Speaker 1:

Another area is metabolic adaptation. So this basically just means that your metabolism adapts and kind of changes to match the weight that you are. So as we're losing weight, our metabolism actually starts to slow down. Because there's not as much weight, our metabolism actually starts to slow down because there's not as much weight, right. So it's like our body is going to naturally slow the metabolism down and it's going to continue to adapt and to change around caloric intake just by adapting or adjusting our metabolic rate. This is one of the major problems with diets that start you on a super low calorie intake to start with. There's not a lot of room to kind of wiggle once you do start losing weight again. Rapid weight loss can trigger metabolic adaptations, making it harder to continue losing weight, especially at that same pace, or to maintain weight loss over a long period of time.

Speaker 1:

This is one of the main reasons I'm a fan of helping my clients also reconnect to their bodies, meaning their hunger, their fullness cues, their cravings, their urges around food, and to not simply just track calories and macros but to really focus on prioritizing your protein and your veggies at meals and then kind of filling in with the other stuff if weight loss is your goal. So these are just some of the main reasons that I really see diets failing you or failing people when they attempt them and they try it Partially it's because this is just how we've been taught. We've never really been taught another way to approach food, never really been taught another way to approach food. For me, this is really where I see the gap of kind of current or popular weight loss ideas or the dieting industry out there and the non-diet approach that I take. It's that bridge between the habits and the behaviors, but also working on your relationship to food, working on those emotional and those psychological things, really working on getting to and those psychological things, really working on getting to the root cause, rather than just trying to solve the symptoms and the very like.

Speaker 1:

The biggest foundational piece is your identity. It's the way that you view yourself and getting that to line up with the goals that you are working to create. So for effective and sustainable weight management, it really is crucial to focus on overall health and not just the number on the scale, to adopt balanced and realistic eating habits, engage in regular physical activity that you enjoy, and to address those psychological and emotional factors that may be contributing to some unhealthy eating patterns. Consulting with a nutrition coach or maybe even a registered dietitian can really provide that personalized guidance based on your individual needs and goals.

Speaker 1:

So, with all that being said, if you feel like you have tried every diet out there, you are tired of feeling like a failure and feeling super defeated in this area of food or your weight or the scale, or maybe even just in life in general, you feel like there's more life out there for you to be living, then I want to invite you to hop on a totally free consult with me. You can schedule that by emailing alicia at aliciacarlsoncom or filling out the contact form aliciacarlsoncom. Slash contact. Let's go ahead and get that on the books. There is truly no better time for you to take your health in your hands than right now. Thank you so much for spending your time with me today and this week. I hope that you have a lovely rest of your day, an amazing week, and until we meet again, I'll talk to you soon. Bye.