Written by: Meaghan McElroen, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
The problem with most diets is they create the diet mentality. The majority of diets in the world today focus on deprivation, cutting out food groups, and controlling every calorie you ingest. After doing a few diets, your brain will start to create its own diet mentality.
The diet mentality is an all-or-nothing way of thinking we often get trapped in after years of yo-yo dieting and wishing for faster weight loss.
Without being aware of it, you probably have a set of beliefs about what it means to lose weight, what you “should” do to lose weight, and what causes weight gain. My personal diet mentality for years looked a little like this:
Carbs and sugar are bad, and to lose weight, I need to cut them out, eat 1,200 calories or less a day, and exercise at least 60 minutes a day. If I missed one day or indulged on a day I hadn’t planned to indulge, I automatically felt like a failure and gave up.
Have you ever started your day with a nice breakfast but then at 11 am, someone offers you a donut or something? With the diet mentality present, it is easy to go down the rabbit hole of overthinking this one donut.
Thoughts like:
“Can I get away with it?”
“I have been trying to eat clean, so I shouldn’t eat it because it will ruin my diet.”
“I really want it, and it is free, plus I don't want to be rude.”
So many thoughts going back and forth on whether to have the donut or not. Let’s say you choose to have the donut. What happens is often more thinking about what it means to have eaten the donut.
Your diet mentality is still present, with more thoughts coming up, such as, “Crap, I just ate a donut, I went off my diet, and now I have failed for the day. What’s the point? I might as well eat what I want today and start fresh tomorrow.”
Then you may proceed to go overboard eating junk food, fast food, more donuts, and indulging today because you tell yourself you will do better tomorrow.
This is the all-or-nothing diet mentality.
This diet mentality is what leads to eating emotionally and binge eating. It isn’t about the food you are eating. It is about how seriously you take your own thinking that shows up around the food.
At the moment, you react to the thoughts and feelings of deprivation and feeling hopeless around food by giving up and eating more.
Maybe it is different for you. Maybe your diet mentality is simply the fact you are thinking about food all day, and you are just white-knuckling through cravings and hoping to make it through the day. You do well. You make it through the day without “giving in” and then come home tired, hungry, and wanting to relax and wind up snacking and eating junk food at home instead of at work.
Another way it can show up is if you have a fun event to go to tonight, like a party where you know there will be indulgences in wine and cake. You plan to indulge, and so you skip lunch to save up calories to get away with indulging only to show up to the party starving and so hungry that you can’t stop eating and wind up overeating. At some point earlier in the day, you had thoughts to hoard calories and chose to believe that thought. This led to being extremely hungry and unable to control yourself around food at the party. While sure you had plenty of calories saved up, you still wound up overeating in reaction to how you felt.
Your struggle to lose weight and feel normal around food isn’t about the food or knowing what to eat. It is about your own thinking and beliefs around these foods, weight loss, and your body. So instead of counting calories, cutting out food groups, and doing hours of cardio, you may find it helpful to simply understand your habit, why it is happening, and how to stop acting on it.
Food is neither good nor bad. It’s just food. It is how you choose to use it, or should I say, overuse it, that makes it harmful.
Food doesn’t cause weight gain. Overeating causes weight gain.
You might hear that and think, "Well, if overeating causes weight gain, then I should calorie count to make sure I don’t overeat." Listen, it isn’t that calorie counting is bad or can’t help. It could. It is that if your diet mentality looks at calorie counting as the be-all, end-all to weight loss, so the moment you go over calories, your diet mentality may lead to you giving up and eating way more.
So again, I say,
"Food doesn’t cause weight gain. Overeating causes weight gain."
Overeating is happening not because of the food but because of your thoughts and beliefs about food, weight loss, and your body. So then, the answer to food freedom comes from the inside out. By understanding what the diet mentality is, noticing your own, and slowing down, you can change your relationship with food from the inside out. Without deprivation.
"When our minds shift, and our beliefs change, our behavior will naturally change too."
I struggled for over 5 years with emotional overeating and binge eating habits. When I started to see all food as allowed and abundant, when I stopped believing the diet mentality story I was telling myself, how I behaved around food completely changed.
Meaghan McElroen, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Meaghan McElroen is on a mission to inspire and empower you to create a lifestyle that is both sustainable and healthier without deprivation dieting. Today Meaghan is a NASM Certified Personal Trainer and Compulsive and Emotional Eating Wellness Coach, but earlier in life, she struggled with body issues and unhealthy eating habits.
After years of binge eating, emotional overeating, and trying to outrun her eating habit, Meaghan was able to change her relationship with food by learning about how the human experience truly works.
With this new understanding, Meaghan has helped others shift away from the diet mentality that keeps them stuck and feeling crazy around food, just like she used to.
She is the founder of The Meaghan Method, a safe community where members can openly talk about their eating habits and gain support and feedback. She is also the creator of Wisdom Before WIllpower and Intuitive Eating Encouraged. Both are online programs created to help you trust your body again and learn how to change your eating habits from the inside out.
Meaghan will teach you how to be happier and healthier than ever without dieting.
Exercise is optional, freedom is possible.
