If you haven’t figured out how to reach and maintain your goal weight yet, there could be 4 reasons that your current diet isn’t working.

Sometimes I hear women say their diet worked, but they just got too lazy and re-gained the weight. In my opinion, if the results weren’t permanent, then it didn’t actually work. Most women aren’t starting a diet with the intention of losing and then re-gaining the weight later.

We want permanent results. We want to be healthy and confident for LIFE, not just until the next vacation, wedding, or high school reunion.

If you haven’t been able to create this result yet, it doesn’t mean it’s not possible for you. Often, we blame ourselves for not having the results when we should be blaming the process we tried to get there.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with you just because you haven’t done it yet. You’re just missing a piece of the puzzle. Instead of blaming yourself, get honest about the diets you’ve tried and why they didn’t work for you.

4 Reasons Why Your Diet Isn’t Working

If you don’t learn from your failures, you’ll never move past them. But in order to learn from them, you first need to figure out why they didn’t work.

If you’re ready to understand the reasons why your diet isn’t working and finally step into the health of your dreams, you’re in the right place.

Let’s dive in…

Reason 1 – You don’t believe you can follow it forever.

Do you know deep down that the way you’re eating is not something you will do forever? If so, you’re primitive brain (the habitual, instinctual part of your brain) is going to be searching for excuses to quit ALL. THE. TIME. 

Our primitive brains are wired to instinctually avoid anything unfamiliar or unpleasant. Since behavior change means new experiences that are often unpleasant at first, this part of the brain is on high-alert. Even if staying the same causes you emotional pain, your primitive brain would rather nothing change. It only cares about keeping you safe, comfortable, and alive.

If your diet is something you are only doing temporarily, to achieve a result, instead of forever because it makes you feel great, your brain will want to self-sabotage. 

This can look like…

• Telling yourself, “this one cookie won’t really matter”.
• Sneaking unplanned bites of food in here and there without consciously thinking about it.
• Giving in to the slightest pressure from friends and family to “treat yourself” with food/drinks
• Telling yourself you “deserve it” because you’ve been so good
• Telling yourself you “deserve it” because you had a crappy day at work

All of these are examples of the “little quits” we make on our goals when we don’t believe the changes we’re making are permanent.

Instead of believing that you that A.) You can’t reach your goal because you aren’t willing to follow this diet for life or B.) You can only reach your goal by doing things that feel awful, you need to shift your beliefs about what it will take to get where you want to go.

Ask yourself “What am I willing to do for life? And what am I not?”. Then, look for the ways you can make that work for your goal instead of seeing it as the reason why you can’t do it.

Source: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/our-three-brains-the-reptilian-brain

Reason 2 – It’s not customized for you and your body.

There are no two people who have the exact same metabolism. Everyone has a different level of maintenance calories, a different carbohydrate-tolerance, and a different gut microbiome. All of these come into play in determining the right amount of food and balance of macronutrients for you.

So the next time you’re searching for meal plans on Pinterest or you want to try a new protocol you read about somewhere, don’t ignoring the facts. Your body is not the same as anyone else’s in the entire world! 

I’m not knocking it if you do want to try someone else’s diet plan. I’m just saying that taking someone else’s plan as the end-all-be-all for YOU will get you into trouble.

Take it from the girl who has read all the nutrition books and tried all the diets…No one know what’s right for you, better than YOU.

That’s why I teach that the best way to lose weight is to get in tune with your body’s natural hunger and fullness cues and learn to differentiate real hunger from your mental and emotional urges to eat. When you learn to listen to your body and stop eating for reasons other than a real, physical hunger, you’ll eliminate all the extra eating that results in excess weight.

You won’t need someone else’s “cookie cutter” diet to tell what to do to reach your goals.

Source: https://themodelhealthshow.com/7-factors-control-calories/

Reason 3 – It’s making your relationship with food worse.

Is your diet is more creating fear, anxiety and stress around food? Is it making you want to stay home and be a hermit instead going out and enjoying your life? These are massive red flags!

While it’s certainly easier to lose weight short term if you’re terrified to eat anything other than veggies, fruits and meat and you never eat out, it’s also setting you up for a horrible relationship with food and a lot of misery down the road.

What’s the point of losing weight and feeling more confident if you’re not enjoying the rest of your life too?

I’ve been that girl before who was so obsessed with counting calories that she didn’t want to go out to dinner with friends…That’s how I know that extremely strict diet protocols like that can make your perfectionism ramp up X100! 

When I was trying to eat 1200 calories a day, if I ever allowed myself a “treat”, I’d end up eating it like there was no tomorrow. I’d tell myself that this was my only chance to have it, I’d already ruined the day, and I’d just workout or eat less the next day to make up for it.

All of this restriction created a horrible relationship with food. I didn’t believe I could trust myself around the unhealthy foods that I really loved. So when inevitably, I was around those foods, I felt totally out of control.

If your diet is creating any of these feelings around eating for you, it’s time to take a step back…

Ask yourself, “Do I feel more in control with food now than before this diet?”. If it’s a no, this diet is likely keeping you creating the consistency that you need to reach your goal.

Reason 4 – You’re relying on THE DIET, instead of trusting in yourself.

Most diets teach us to rely on the diet itself for results instead of teachings us to trust ourselves. When you bounce back and forth between being on and off diets frequently, you train your brain that there are only two mode:

1. Being on a diet and being miserable.

2. Being off a diet and feeling guilty.

By the time you have gone through this cycle several times, you’ve likely engrained a new belief in your psyche: The only way to lose weight is by being on a miserable diet.

When this is your underlying belief, your brain will always be searching for evidence that re-affirms this belief. This is called confirmation bias.

Instead, you could choose to believe that you can trust yourself to do it without needing to follow someone else’s meal plan. If you believed this to be true, you’d search for confirmation of that belief instead…

You’d start asking yourself more helpful questions like:

• How is it true that I don’t need a strict diet to reach my goal?
• What evidence is there that people can lose weight and easily maintain it forever?
• What could I try to be able to lose weight without hating the process?

When you start re-directing your brain to asking more helpful questions, you WILL come up with answers. As you implement those into your life, you’ll learn that you can trust yourself and your ability to create solutions. You don’t need an outside diet or meal plan to do that for you.

Source: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-confirmation-bias-2795024

One last note…

If you’re constantly stressed about what you should and shouldn’t eat, what diet or fasting protocol you should try next, or comparing yourself to everyone else around you — I totally get it. Back in the day, I was right there with you.

I was so confused about what to do next, always feeling guilty for not “being good”, and wishing that I could lose the last 10 pounds. I just didn’t believe it was possible for me without feeling deprived.

In my mind, other people who prioritized their health & fitness must have more time, money, and motivation than I me…

Eventually I learned the truth: Our life circumstances only hold us back if we believe that they can. 

If we believe our own excuses (lack of time, lack of money, lack of motivation, etc.) we give them power. When we think, feel and act from the belief that our goals are inevitable, we’re capable of overcoming every obstacle life throughs our way and blowing our own minds about what’s possible.

Coaching is the best way I know of to bridge the gap between what you currently think about your ability to reach your goals and what you need to be thinking to bring them to fruition.

Once you fully believe that your success is inevitable, you’re right.

If you could use help creating that belief and overcoming your own excuses, click here to schedule a free consult call with me today. I’d love to chat with you and show you how Health Coach can make achieving your goals inevitable.