Why even dieticians are increasingly urging people to live without diets?
When you eat according to strict recommendations and plans, you do achieve your goals, but can’t imagine a healthy life without rigid dietary do’s and don’ts? You have probably fallen into a vicious cycle of weight loss. It is a real problem that is fortunately increasingly being addressed.
This is due to perfectionism in the approach to dieting, the expectation of quick results and a lack of understanding of the issue of sustainably building healthy eating habits. In practice, a truly healthy diet is never 100% perfect. There is room for spontaneity, trying new dishes, as well as last minute changes to the menu, for example when you don’t manage to get all the products from your shopping list. Getting rid of the notion that a healthy diet must be 100% in accordance with a plan is very liberating and facilitates the way to building healthy habits.
Eating according to a precise plan has its advantages, but also many disadvantages. If you have concerns that you will undo your results and fail to achieve your goals once you abandon the prescribed diet, this text is for you. Step by step, I will prepare you to abandon your diet(s) in order to live and eat healthily without rigid frameworks and restrictions.
When is it time to abandon the diet?
If you believe in the effectiveness of restrictive monodiets – led by vegetable fasting, lemon or protein diets – a good time to quit them is now, at this very moment. These diets are not only very restrictive, they also do not teach a proper approach to eating. And their effects, although quick, will not last long. It is best to break with such diets radically, and instead take an interest in building healthy eating habits.
The situation is different with a balanced menu created by a professional. In this case, it is better to prepare for its withdrawal and do it gradually. A carefully prepared (e.g. by a dietician) nutrition plan is useful at the beginning of the road to healthier eating. A planned-out diet eliminates the problem of properly adjusting the proportions of ingredients in meals and the lack of knowledge of the right portions for one’s needs, plus it provides ready-to-use ideas for healthy meals. However, no one wants a rigid diet that has to be followed for life. It’s just a tool to achieve the goal of better composing your menu on your own so that it’s healthy and nutritious.
It is impossible to know exactly when is the right time to abandon a prepared menu. For some, a month of following a plan is enough to set sail on their own healthy eating track. Others only after several months will feel confident enough to continue eating healthily without weighing and counting every product.
The signals indicating that a plan established in top-down fashion is not the optimal solution for you include:
- When you “keep a clean bowl” all the time, manage to achieve your goals and move and eat healthily, but any deviation from the plan causes a cascade of other unhealthy choices.
- You have a sense of guilt when you have to deviate from the set menu.
- Food is such an important aspect for you that you subordinate other areas of your life to the need to stick to your diet without exception.
- The need to modify your diet causes you stress (for example, because of a trip or the unavailability of a certain ingredient in the store).
All of the above situations can be symptoms of a disturbed relationship with food, which rigid diets can only exacerbate.
There’s also the other side of the coin: learning to live without a diet is also useful for people who simply don’t need it anymore. This can be the case when you have achieved the goals you set at the beginning (not just related to your figure, but, for example, to increasing intestinal comfort or regulating bowel movements), or when you are perfectly fine with healthy eating on your own. Trust yourself. Healthy living without a diet really is possible.
How to give up a diet? The small steps method and 8 effective tips
Up until now, have you followed a set diet from A to Z? If you feel confident only by adhering to a specific menu, use the small steps method in “breaking with the diet”. It prevents a complete turn toward these less healthy dietary choices.
1. Use home measurements instead of scales
If meal preparation has so far involved you meticulously weighing out all the ingredients, the first step would be to switch to home measurements. Put the kitchen scale away and use a “spoon”, “glass” or “handful” to measure meal ingredients.
2. Make your own modifications and add variety to your menus
Take a more flexible approach to the menu. Replace a product with another from the same group, compose a salad yourself, substitute a salad for dinner and, for example, cook groats instead of rice. Many diet plans allow such substitutions throughout the entire diet, but if you have been following a plan very strictly so far and feel uncomfortable with abandoning it, this will be another small step worth taking. In this way you will take more responsibility for your menu.
3. Plan out the menu, but do it without strictly defining the weight of the products
General meal planning is no longer a rigid diet. Determine loosely what you will eat on the individual days of the week and prepare a shopping list based on that. You can plan your breakfasts, lunches and dinners more carefully, or outline what balanced meals you feel like eating soon.
Read also: “Meal Prep. How to Plan Meals for the Whole Week? A Sample Plan For 7 Days”
4. Check the visual proportions of ingredients on the plate, not with a kitchen scale
A “healthy plate” is an appealing graphic representation of the healthy proportions of individual ingredients in a balanced meal. The one recommended by the National Centre for Nutrition Education consists of:
- 50% of fruits and vegetables,
- 25% of whole grain cereals and unrefined carbohydrate sources,
- 25% of protein sources.
In addition, it is recommended to supplement a healthy plate with unsaturated healthy fats, drink enough fluids, and avoid processed foods and salt.
If half of your plate is occupied by vegetables, you throw in whole-grain carbohydrates and a protein source, and top it off with nuts or healthy oil, for example, each meal will be balanced. It seems too simple to be true, but by eating this way and ensuring a variety of products, most Poles would dramatically improve the quality of their nutrition.
5. Stimulate culinary creativity and cook with ingredients you already have at home
Culinary creativity is an underrated skill worth having. Healthy meals don’t have to be complicated. So give yourself space for kitchen experiments and come up with your own flavour combinations, such as zero waste meals from leftovers. Combine unprocessed products and allow yourself to make mistakes – you’ll give yourself flexibility in your daily healthy eating and save on many ingredients.
6. Do an honest examination of conscience and think about what habits you want to build
Completely jumping from a not-so-healthy lifestyle to one full of ideal habits is very tiring, discouraging and even unrealistic to maintain in the long term. Think about what habits you want to build most urgently or what eating habits you want to get rid of.
Choose no more than a few items, put them in order from the most urgent (giving the most real benefits) to the least urgent. Try to introduce them consecutively for at least a dozen days before you start working on the next habit. You’ll know exactly what to focus on and won’t be discouraged by the flurry of changes.
Resolutions related to the desire to build healthier habits and abandon the diet culture may include, for example:
- Increasing the amount of vegetables and fruits eaten.
- Drinking enough water and fluids.
- Adding healthy nuts, seeds and grains to the menu.
- Changing the grain products consumed from refined to whole grains.
- Trying out new recipes and putting new products on the menu.
Depending on the person, these small resolutions will be different, as there are different areas to work on. But don’t treat them as rigid prescriptions – let them be loose inspiration for a healthier path.
7. Keep a food diary
If you feel the need for extra support to restrain you from unhealthy habits when abandoning diets and switching to intuitive eating, use a food diary for a while. This is a very simple method. Eat with common sense and intuition, but write down everything you eat. You will have easy insight into whether you are meeting your goals or moving away from them through your diet. The mere fact that you write down what you eat can keep you from eating emotionally and mindlessly reaching for snacks you don’t even crave. A food diary is an excellent method of self-regulation of menus.
8. Trust yourself and listen to your body
To regain control of your nutrition, you need to approach yourself with kindness, empathy and trust. Whatever it sounds like, make sure you are able to eat without a rigid plan and live a healthy life. If you have a nutritional examination of conscience done, you already know the strengths and weaknesses of your eating pattern.
Listen to your body’s signals, recognise and respond to hunger, respect the feeling of satiety. This is one of the most important tips of intuitive eating, which supports people who abandon “diets” forever.
The most common mistakes when abandoning the “diet culture” and life with diets
Mistake 1: Focusing on short-term results and falling into a vicious cycle of dieting
Decide from the beginning that long-term results are important to you – a healthy relationship with food on a daily basis is a priority, whereas a change in body shape or weight are side effects. Instead of saying: “I'm going to eat in a way so that I can lose 2 sizes by the summer”, define your goal as, for example: “I want to have more energy and strength on a daily basis”.
Also, don’t weigh or measure yourself too often. You can do this from time to time, but be aware that body weight fluctuates strongly, for example depending on your menstrual cycle, the weight of your intestinal contents or even the weather. Focusing too much on body weight can lead to falling into this pattern again:
- “The scale shows a higher value, I have gained weight again and I need to go on a diet”.
- “I will start losing weight from Monday, so today it is time for ice cream, pizza and crisps to say goodbye to these products”.
- “I rigidly follow a diet and achieve some results, until the first stumble”.
- “I have a small deviation from the diet and feel that all is lost”.
- “I’m giving up the diet, I’m not up to it”.
- “I eat without limits or special desire the products that I have given up to compensate for my time on the diet”.
- “I’ve put on weight again, I need to take care of myself, it’s time to go on a diet”.
Mistake 2: Total ban on deviations
Do you reject a diet plan or a particular diet, but still try to eat according to what it looked like? This is a good step. However, allow yourself flexibility. Giving up your favourite dishes completely will not bring you any closer to success on the path to healthy eating. It’s more effective to consciously incorporate them into your menu so you don’t feel like “I'm on a diet and have to give up something”. By increasing the flexibility of your menu, the effects may appear a little slower, but it’s actually a necessity if you want truly lasting changes.
Mistake 3: Ignoring feelings of hunger and satiety
Are you burping in your stomach, feeling dizzy or weak? These are signs of hunger. Don’t ignore them or try to drink them away with coffee, because hunger won’t disappear on its own. In the transition to a “diet-free life”, some people become even harsher on themselves. They subconsciously think that in order to eat healthily, they must undereat and feel hungry. This is not the way to go. It is worth respecting the feeling of hunger and reading it as a signal from the body that it needs (healthy) fuel.
On the other hand, the same respect is due to the feeling of satiety: be OK with having something left on your plate that would theoretically still fit in your stomach. Stop the meal when you reach satiety, and healthy intuitive eating will be much easier.
Mistake 4: Explaining cravings with “bodily needs”
The human body, and more specifically your brain, is programmed to prefer nutrient-dense foods (especially those that are a mixture of fat and sugar). Listening to your body is important, listening to hunger and satiety is essential, but don’t go too far the other way either. The craving for chocolate or crisps is most likely not a subconscious desire for magnesium or sodium, but simply a craving. If it happens once a week, it’s not a problem as it doesn’t undo the overall nutrition. It is up to you to set limits on which cravings you plan to indulge and which will give you the most pleasure.
Mistake 5: Waiting for the magical weight-loss remedy
Once at the peak of popularity were the cabbage and banana diets, today they are the scandi diet and OMAD. People think there is a key to or secret knowledge about healthy eating that they haven’t yet possessed, so they can’t achieve the desired results. This is why many people reach for diets with clear rules and rigid principles. This is not the way to go, there is no magical remedy.
One of the more common mistakes made in abandoning diets is not living a full life without diets and adopting an attitude of waiting for the perfect diet to finally be effective. I switched from a strawberry diet to a handful diet to then take up juice diet and ended up on a dangerous cotton ball diet. This is not a good method. Do not let yourself be told again that this time and with this diet it will be different. Bet on sustainable habits, and treat fad diets as a curiosity at most, not something worth following.
Even realising that diet culture has a big impact on you and you want to get away from it is already a good step. The truth is that minor lifestyle modifications and small compromises will work much better in the long term than harsh restrictions.
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