What’s Keeping You in the Diet Cycle?

Some fortunate people can go on a diet, lose the excess fat and then simply get on with their lives. Others get stuck in the eternal cycle of wanting to be thin, dieting, craving, bingeing, regaining the weight and then wanting to be thin again. You want to break free from this exhausting and depressing merry-go-round of losing and regaining weight but you’re not ready to give up doing what you know best. Let’s examine the diet cycle mentality.

There is a Magic Cure

The reason you haven’t lost weight and kept it off is because you haven’t found the right diet that suits you particular physical and emotional needs. You need to eat more carbs, or more fat, you need to cycle your calories or have cleaner re-feeds, and you need a coach for accountability. Once you figure out precisely what the optimum formula is for you and you have an expert to help you then you will lose weight and keep it off.

One Last Diet

Once you lose the weight, then you will learn how to get in tune with your body’s hunger signals and eat mindfully. You just need to commit totally to this last diet, get to your goal and then you will stop for good.

You Love Health and Fitness

You really enjoy being in control of your food and planning your training regime. Time spent scouring the latest fitness magazines and entering your weight into a spreadsheet is fun and rewarding. You spend most of your waking hours plotting and planning how you are going to burn that fat!

I Want to Break Free!!

The only way to break free from the diet cycle is to come to the place where you no longer believe the stories you tell yourself. If there was a magic cure that worked for you, you or someone else would have found it by now. Count the number of diet books on your bookshelf, the e-books on your computer and the magazines on the coffee table.  Have any of them given you permanent weight loss?

If you have reached your goal weight in the past (or are there now) have you been able to transition from your diet to a place of moderation and comfort? Or have you been consumed by cravings and hunger? Do you ever feel like you just want to keep eating and never stop? Cravings and bingeing follow dieting in the same way that night follows day. If you restrict your calorie intake or cut out a food group you are guaranteeing that you will overeat as soon as your willpower falters.

If your thoughts weren’t consumed by calories and carbs, what would you think about? Are you holding on to this way of life because without the constant distraction you might have to examine other areas in your life? How is your relationship, your job, your health, your happiness? Are you investing all your energy into achieving a perfect body because it means you don’t notice the unhappiness in other areas in your life? What would fill the dieting void?

What to Do?

Stop. Stop right now. Give up dieting in the same way you would give up smoking or drinking. If you are terrified that everything you know and love/hate will disappear and you won’t know how to live in this strange new world, then just do it for today.

You might binge, and you might get fatter, but hasn’t that happened in the past anyway? Instead of going around the cycle once again, simply stop and get off. It takes courage but I know you can do it.