Everywhere you turn, someone is telling you about a diet plan or supplement or cleanse that will "change your life," often with no effort and hardly any actual input from you required. Seems to good to be true, right?
Most of the time, those diets and supplements are nothing like they're marketed to be. Losing weight, getting toned, and learning to love your body does not come through shortcuts. Diets can be damaging not just to your body but to your emotions and mental health, too.
When you latch on to a fad diet, you're more likely to be missing out on certain vitamins and minerals that are excluded from the plan entirely. Most plans require you to cut out a certain food group altogether or only eat the same thing for the duration of the diet. Without a wide range of foods, your body ends up lacking or even deficient in essential vitamins and minerals.
Dieting in a deficit for too long can also make it easier to gain back the weight when the diet ends. Your metabolism slows down while on an extreme diet plan. If you return to old eating habits after the diet has ended, the weight comes back faster.
Without enough food to burn, you end up feeling more fatigued. It is infinitely more beneficial (now and in the long-term) to fuel your body well rather than starve your body like most diets tend to do.
This vicious cycle also repeats itself. The next time an appealing diet comes along, you hop on, restrict for awhile, maybe lose weight, then the same thing happens. When this type of "failure" recurs, you start to internalize that failure as something that is your fault. This type of cyclical shame, guilt, and negative self-talk can be very damaging and bleed over into all aspects of life.
If a diet has an "end-date," it's not a sustainable way of living well.
If you're ready to jump off the dieting hamster wheel and nourish your body, break the cycle and contact me at jaimepalinchak@gmail.com or schedule a free initial consult.
