How many times have you been a victim of the diet mentality? Yes, I too have tried my fair share of diets, but over a decade ago, I said goodbye to the devastating diet mentality forever! Here are 3 compelling reasons why you must reject the damaging diet mentality.

Diet Mentality Danger: Designed for Failure

95% of diets fail and most dieters regain their lost weight within 1-5 years (source).

Dieting leads to deprivation, deprivation leads to cravings, and cravings can lead to out-of-control behavior. This out-of-control behavior can often begin a vicious cycle of restriction, starvation, binging, repeat. (Read “Do You Really Know How to Control Your Eating?“)

Diets have been designed to have a designated starting and stopping point. Prior to starting the diet, many find themselves on one last “hoorah”, indulging in all of the soon-to-be “sinful” food. Once the diet is over, it’s a free-for-all.

When a diet completely eliminates an entire food group, such as carbohydrates, there’s no way that this diet can be sustained long term.

Diets are designed by nature to fail.

Diets Damage Your Mental Sanity

I don’t know about you, but “diets” make me crazy! I’m told I can’t eat this and I have to eat that. This leaves me feeling deprived, frustrated, and irritable!

Dieters get themselves through the self-imposed diet prison by telling themselves it’s only for a limited amount of time. Soon they will be able to indulge in whatever food they so choose to eat.

Every waking moment is about obsessing over every morsel of food consumed. Food is tracked, weighed, and measured.

Food is labeled and either “good” or “bad” and when one slips up and eats “bad” food, they are shamed into feeling less than and a failure.

Diets oftentimes address food intake alone and neglect the vital work of mind, body, and spirit.

There’s nothing that makes me cringe more than hearing another woman talk poorly about her body. #ditchthediet #bodyacceptance

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Diets Do Not Equal Body Acceptance

75% of American women surveyed admitted to having unhealthy thoughts, feelings, or behaviors related to food or their bodies (source). Many diets do not stem out of a love for one’s body. Instead, diets begin out of hate, guilt, and/or shame over one’s body.

There’s nothing that makes me cringe more than hearing another woman talk poorly about her body. Body acceptance, or neutrality, means focusing on your health above your looks. Focusing on your health does not equate solely with a number on the scale.

Too many physicians perpetuate the diet mentality and body shaming by placing too much emphasis on one’s BMI as an indicator of “health”. Again, health is so much more than a number on the scale! This is why I’m passionate about helping women ditch the diet mentality, develop healthy habits to last a lifetime, and emerge as the confident women they were made to be! (Want to know how we can work together? Visit this page.)

If you feel like a failure because of dieting, please know you are not a failure. It is dieting that has failed you!

Drop a comment below and tell me, are you fan of diets why or why not? I’d love to hear from you.