Diets are dumb. Say it with me.
I get a lot of clients asking for the fix-all diet.
Is it veganism? Is it keto? Is it fasting? Juicing? Aliens? Drugs? Bugs?
Well, that all depends on the intention behind WHY you’re dieting.
Are you trying to lessen your carbon footprint? (https://www.google.com/…/veganism-environmental-impact-plan… )
Then sure, there are arguments for a plant-based diet that might fulfill your eco-political drives.
But for many of us - our relationship with our bodies is an everyday struggle that can restrict us from relaxing or participating in even the simplest of experiences. Sunbathing topless, beach BBQs, wearing clothes that you find sexy, the gentle touch of your lover's hand resting on your belly.
For those of us who feel this way, holidays can be tricky. A bunch of feasts, late nights, tight schedules, crazy-busy work weeks. So keeping up with New Years pressure to look good can be as exciting as a very sad wet bag.
But even outside of the holidays, the answer to what lifestyle gets you the life and body you want is layered.
In my professional experience, it depends entirely on the following:
- Your lifestyle - Your favorite foods - Foods that bring you comfort and joy - If you have time to food prep, grocery store - How much stress you are juggling a day - Are you trying to slim or build a six-pack/bubble butt? (Is it better for you to be on a high-fat low carb diet or a healthy carb and protein) - How many humans are you living/working with/around? Are they trash pandas living off of twinkies? - Your own unique body, blood, ph balance, allergies, sensitivities, etc. - Your size and history - Your culture (or mix of cultures if you moved around or have multicultural parents) - Do you drink water? - Do you need more salt in your diet? (You heard me.)
Diets are dumb.
I said it. Join in.
They give quick results that are unsustainable. Chasing a diet is like chasing a high, chasing quick superficial fix.
If you’re crash dieting, it’s you vs. your primal wiring to survive. Your body is probably leeching calcium from your bones to neutralize the acidity in your stomach that results when you’re not eating enough. This can lead to a number of issues later on in life like osteoporosis and gourd.
Many women/men I work with end up leaning on pills, like Adderal, caffeine pills, laxatives, weight loss pills, workout shakes, or whatever else is on the market to help get through the holidays/ above average stressful times feeling in control. Along with a laundry list of other detrimental side effects, dependence on chemicals for quick fixes can deplete your nutrition and physical body IF you don’t have a long term strategy for what lifestyle will sustainably support your results. Not to mention, your body will most likely try to balance the PH in your blood (from pills/chemicals/stomach acid) by doing the same as above and leaching calcium from your bones and burning through your stomach lining.
After a week, two weeks, a month of whatever intensive diet you’re on, impulse starts driving and you can start feeling cravings, sugar crashes, weakness, irritability, chronic hangriness, binging, eating trash that feels like a really good idea one moment and a terrible one the next.
This is what’s happening if your crash dieting, unregulated fasting, starving yourself, OR being too rigid.
You are imposing a lifestyle where inspiration, creativity, taste, + flavor are completely missing from your life. Taste can trigger a whole array of life experiences from comfort, excitement, sereneness, sensuality, joy, the good kind of sleepy. It can communicate family histories, and embody past relatives, and channel traditions long past in the present. It can communicate love and care and nourishment for yourself or others.
It can heal the sick and hopeless and bring a momentary spark into someone depressed.
Food has so much to offer us all. So if your diet is one of abstinence and restriction, well you may be missing out on some of life’s easiest wonders to access.
This isn’t to say there isn’t a time and place for fasting. But this should be done with a guided strategy and nutritional plan for after the fast is over.
If you feel like addiction is food addiction your life, a regulated fast might get your system back in alignment but I have found the only diets that work are ones that INCLUDE the things that bring you joy and pleasure to indulge in.
Some people swear by intermittent fasting - there are ways to do this where you don’t feel hungry and where your brain is not starved.
“Intermittent fasting can be an effective way to lose weight. But research shows it has tons of other benefits, too — like weight management, brainpower, and cellular protection.” - Bulletproof.com.
The beauty of it all is- we can manipulate our tastebuds to taste MORE of the things in life, like salt and sugar and bittersweetness, in healthy foods. If you’re eating foods with processed sugar, fried foods, on a daily basis, you are high blasting your tastebuds. Doing this means that healthy foods taste like garbage to you because they are mild and your tastebuds are overworked. But fasting properly can bring flavors back into foods that may be bland to you right now with very little effort.
Changing your lifestyle also doesn’t mean you don’t get your favorite foods. If you love fried chicken, simply replacing some things can help. bake the chicken in breaded crust made from almond flour or rice flour, which can boost your nutrients/healthy aminos and lower trashy calories and sugars that are metabolized when we eat white flour and then murder all the nutrients by frying our food.
And this would just be the new regular replacement for your daily diet.
Every once in a while including real fried chicken in your diet is also important if it speaks to your soul. But you’d be surprised how sensitized your taste buds feel after you get yourself clean. Many people I’ve worked with have found that once they get into a balanced lifestyle their taste buds acclimate and avoiding shitty food becomes way easier because it doesn’t taste as good. Additionally, your body stops craving it because it’s not nutritionally starving anymore.
Imagine if your body worked WITH You vs. against you?!?!
Anyways. Feeling the way you want to in your body can:
* Be delicious * Easy * Faster than you think
Food is our access to pleasure. You deserve a life where things taste damn good.
If you’re struggling to get that body you want, feeling good in the one you already have, finding a good excuse to wear that skimpy banana hammock to the holiday party. Reach out.
I offer 1-1 coaching
It’s a pleasure to serve.
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