If you’ve ever struggled with your weight (either losing or gaining), you’ve probably tried every single health food craze that’s hit the market since your teens. But, one of the biggest problems people have when it comes to food, is with their outlook on food.
The reality is most diets don’t encourage people to change their outlook on food. They don’t even encourage a healthy relationship with food and thus, they rarely see long-lasting results. This is why so many women in the U.S. are overweight, yet “always seem to be on a diet”.
But, as The Fruit Doctor says on her YouTube Channel, “Weight loss is not the criteria you want to use for your overall health”. We become convinced that if we remove one thing or another from our diets, just as we were told by the latest diet guru, we’ll “finally fit into those jeans from high school.”
But there’s a reason that 9 out of 10 women will never fit into those jeans from high school again… they graduated! The only real way to end ‘the struggle’ once and for all is to radically change your outlook on food, thus affecting your relationship to food, by adopting an entire positive lifestyle change.
Is Your Screwed Up
Outlook On Food
Affecting Your Health?
Food As Part Of A Lifestyle
Many people struggle with their diet because they don’t see it as part of their overall lifestyle. If you’re not making changes in all aspects of your life you’re never going to see any real change.
In more literal terms, that means being more active and incorporating regular exercise into your life in general. Also, consider the root causes of why you under or overeat in the first place.
Both under and overeating is linked to stress and anxiety. If you seek help to combat those issues while altering your diet, you may find it easier to manage your weight long-term.
One of the ‘Healthiest Lifestyles’ in the Nutrition World
The Macrobiotic Diet is a great example of a wider approach to just food and dieting. Unfortunately, Macrobiotics is often misunderstood. A lot of people write it off as a ‘fad diet’ because they don’t understand the real definition of macrobiotics, which is:
“a system of holistic principles and dynamic practices that guides choices in nutrition, activity, and lifestyle for physical, emotional, mental, social, and environmental health.”
Nutrition, now there’s a word we haven’t used yet and were discussing health food and dieting. Then there are those ideas that extend beyond just the food you put on your plate.
A macrobiotic diet does have some guidelines about what food you should eat, but it’s more about your relationship to nature and the food sources that are around you.
That’s why a lot of people that follow a macrobiotic diet limit the number of animal products (heart disease-causing) that they eat.
When you start thinking about the wider implications of the food that you eat, and how it impacts yourself and others, it’s a lot easier to make long term changes.
Food Limitations Affect Your Balanced Diet
So many diets are all about cutting out certain foods entirely or putting strict limitations on yourself. This isn’t sustainable as it doesn’t promote a healthy balance of food. The Keto diet, for example, forces you to cut out the majority of your carbs and increase your fat intake.
You may recall the Atkins diet enforced similar rules about 20 years ago. One of the worst results of the Atkins trend (and now similarly, the Keto crowd) was that people weren’t allowed to eat so many of their favorite foods.
They were saying goodbye to all carbs, sweets, almost all fruits, and even certain veggies. When your diet is out of balance like this, you miss out on vital nutrients that are only found in certain food groups.
Unfortunately, people become more concerned with the way they look on the outside than how they feel on the inside. So they continue to deprive themselves of that balanced diet they so desperately need in their life.
Many people also suffered from heart attacks on Dr. Atkins’ famous “eat all the bacon you want” diet. In fact, it’s been a long-held theory that he died as an indirect connection to his own enlarged heart. Of course, the real nail in the coffin was that this “revolution” didn’t include anything about exercise!
Food Deprivation Is No Good
So many people will stick to a diet for a few weeks, then “cheat”. Maybe they eat a whole pie or in the cases of Keto and Atkins, a slice of bread! Either way, people will decide that they’ve failed.
And once they’ve failed, they’ll quit. But quitting a diet and quitting your journey to be healthy are two very different things.
Our brains are hard-wired to seek rewards when we do something good. So while it may not sound conducive to reward 5 lbs lost with a cookie, it’s fine as long as your overall diet is still good.
Starving ourselves or depriving our bodies of ALL the nutrients it needs to be whole, now that will be the death of us.
If you can build a healthy relationship with, and develop a positive outlook on food, it will be easier to stick to a balanced diet and achieve maximum health!
Jessica Rose Adams
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