As I was proofing the final version of my book (due out on March 12th!), I was also reflecting on my own journey.
Writing the book had me revisiting a lot of personal stories and struggles. (I’m sharing it all in the book!)
I was thinking of the 21 year old me, the me who bought every diet under the sun, who purchased probably 100 bottles of diet pills over 5 years, who tried every cleanse, pill, remedy, and “solution” that promised weight loss…
…and it got me reflecting about what the diet industry doesn’t want us to know.
Because the truth is: the weight loss industry is a 20 BILLION dollar a year industry. So they must have something that keeps people coming back, right?
Here’s what I wish the 21 year old me had known about the diet industry secrets (which probably would have saved me $10,000 worth of buying diet plans/pills/programs!)
1. That It’s NOT Your Fault If You Fail.
Failure is built into the diet cycle. Why?
Because of the Law of Dieting: for every equal and opposite diet, there is a binge. Every. Single. Time.
If you go “on” something, you will go “off”. Period.
But that’s not what the weight loss industry makes you think.
They create this expectation that if you buy their product, you will lose weight: but only if you can stick to it.
So if you can’t stick to it, it must be YOUR fault.
I’ll clear that one up right now by telling you that is 100% false. So let yourself off the hook right now 🙂
Failure is built into the nature of the cycle. No one can stay “on” something forever.
2. That It’s Not Just “Eat Less & Exercise More”.
Oh yes. The weight loss industry wants you to keep thinking it’s this simple. They convince you the formula is as easy as this:
Eat less calories, cut out processed foods, reduce sugar, or omit starchy carbs, + go to the gym more=weight loss forever!
But we’ve been duped.
Because if it seriously was as simple as that, then we wouldn’t have a society that is desperately struggling with food and weight.
If we just follow that simple formula, we don’t address the underlying issues:
- Why we turn to food when we’re sad, bored, lonely, angry, happy, or (insert other emotion here)
- Why we can’t stop bingeing
- How to take care of our needs on a deep level (and what those needs even are)
- What foods work for our bodies and our lifestyles
- Why we know what to eat but just can’t put it into practice
…and about a million other things that go into healing our food issues.
We’re complicated beings and our food/weight issues are a complicated subject.
Sure, we potentially may lose some weight if we did follow the “simple” formula. (But see #1 for then going off of the plan!)
But the caveat is that it never gives us lasting results. And that’s what we want. REAL results.
3. That Health is NOT Just food and Weight.
The reality is that health is not just what we put into our mouths. Health is not just a number on the scale. And success is not just lowering that number.
Health is made up of 4 parts: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
If we only look at what we’re eating, we miss the 3 other parts to health!
The diet industry wants us to believe that if we buy X product, follow Y plan, or adhere to Z health guru’s advice, then we’ll be happier and healthier.
But one doesn’t guarantee the other. Losing weight may make you happy for 5 minutes. But what happens after that?
We may get to our “goal weight”, but what about our emotional and mental health? What if we still hate our bodies, have a horrible relationship, and despise our career?
That is not true health.
Health is our whole being. (The diet industry can easily make us think we’re just one thing: our body)
One of the reasons why I wrote my new book is that I wanted to be able to give you a tangible, physical copy (with real life stories and examples) of how to actually stop dieting and find real, true lasting WHOLE health.
You’ll find an in-depth, step by step path out of the diet/binge world in my book.
