Never Diet Again: Five More Alarming Ways Dieting Keeps You From Realizing Your Full Potential

I want to share with you why you should never diet again.

I’m qualified to talk with you about this because I spent over 20 years dieting. I unsuccessfully dieted my way up to 304 pounds, and it wasn’t until I quit dieting that I:

• found weight-loss success,
• lost 174 pounds and kept it off for 8 years,
• and finally healed my relationship with myself and with food.

Knowing what I know now, I’ll never diet again. You shouldn’t either. Here are five more horrible things that dieting does to you, especially restrictive dieting where you have to avoid certain foods or entire food groups. If you want the first five reasons, take a look at last week’s post.

6. Never diet again because it keeps you living in humiliation and shame

I never had a diet work long-term. Not once in over twenty years. It’s likely you’ll get the weight off. It’s unlikely you’ll keep it off very long. And then the shame and humiliation will start. You’ll feel bad about yourself. You’ll start avoiding people, places, and things. You’ll start abusing food to numb yourself or try to fix it. You’ll stop showing up for your own life.

7. Never diet again because it traps you in a cycle

You start another diet to stop the humiliation and shame you feel. You end up hoping the next diet will work. You lose the weight. You gain it back. You feel humiliated and shamed. You stop dieting for a while. Then you start another diet again to stop the humiliation and shame. Over and over and over in a cycle that never ends until you end it.

8. Never diet again because it creates obsession

Dieting creates an obsession with food or your body or your weight or maybe all of those things. An obsession with food is especially true if you’re going hungry on a regular basis. All you’ll end up thinking about all the time is food. Restrictive dieting also is a major factor in the development of eating disorders.

Dieting also creates an obsession with your body and how it looks instead of all the things that it’s capable of doing. You might also get obsessed with weight to the point that you’re measuring your self-worth and how good your day is going to be based on a fraction of a pound on the scale.

9. Never diet again because it leaves you feeling like there’s something wrong with you

That’s especially true if you try diet after diet after diet and lose the weight only to gain it all back. It’s likely that you won’t look at the diet and someone else’s rules as the problem and instead you’ll start thinking that there’s something wrong with you because no diet ever works for you long-term. That thought will chip away at your self-esteem and your self-confidence. I know because that’s what dieting did to me.

10. Never diet again because it keeps your life small

You don’t focus on the dreams you have for your life. You don’t focus on your gifts and talents or what brings you joy or what matters deeply to you. Instead, you focus on nutrient counts and numbers on a scale and if you’re doing the diet right. You end up boxing yourself into a prison of your own making.

So to sum up this whole post: do yourself a kindness and stop dieting, it doesn’t work and it does you more harm than good.

Get off the diet-go-round. Get on with your life.^®

Stop wishing, start doing.
Create your own weight loss before and after success story.

My weight loss transformation & how it can help you lose weight without dieting so you never diet again

You absolutely can break the diet cycle. I got free. Your life can be that way too.

I made my own path because I needed to get myself out of the crazy-making behavior I was having around food. I needed:

• no more dieting.
• no more restrictive eating.
• no weighing and measuring food.
• no off-limit foods.
• no more judgment around food.
• no more trying to figure out healthy eating or just what healthy foods to eat.
• no more judging my self-worth based on the scale.
• no more you’re-not-doing-it-perfectly diet rules that were only fueling my constant thinking about and obsession with food.

I needed to stop: searching for weight loss tips, wondering how to lose belly fat fast or how to lose weight fast, worrying about how to eat healthy or finding healthy snacks for weight loss, coming up with yet another healthy eating plan, trying to have quick weight loss, or forcing myself onto yet another weight loss diet. What I needed instead was to find, out of all the weight loss programs out there, the best weight loss program for me. Turns out, the best way to lose weight was to find out what works for me and do that.

• I’ve lost 160+ pounds naturally by simply trusting myself and listening to my intuition (mindful eating and eating intuitively).
• I have maintained that weight loss for 9 years and counting by trusting myself and listening to my intuition (mindful eating and intuitive eating).
• I no longer have any eating disorders, including bulimia (bulimia nervosa) and binge eating disorder (compulsive overeating).
• I no longer have a fear of food.

Just imagine what you could be doing with your life if you’d just commit to having your own before and after weight loss success story. You could be: following your own dreams and reaching your own goals, cultivating your own passions, and making both your inner and outer worlds a more blissful and peaceful place.

I got that for my life. I want it for yours. I will teach you how.

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Let today be the day you make peace with your body and with food.

For more information, check out the Start Where You Are Weight Loss^® page.