If you’ve ever felt frustrated on your health journey, you might be familiar with feeling sick and tired of the extra pounds or the last stubborn bit of belly fat. That can be frustrating enough, but when an event comes along that you want to get ready and look your best for, it can add to those feelings of disappointment and stress. When you’re not seeing results from your current routine, it can be tempting to turn to what appears to be a quick-fix solution, such as a fad diet.
Unfortunately, there are programs that make a lot of money off your urgency to get to your goal faster. Some of the most popular programs out there include:
- Juice Cleanse Diet: You consume fresh juices made from dietary fiber-rich and vitamin C-loaded fruit.
- Soup Diets: You eat only soup, made mainly with cabbage and other veggies with chicken or other lean protein.
- Grapefruit Diet: Like the name implies, for this diet, you’ll eat half a grapefruit and other healthy foods in every meal.
Based on the quick description, those diets don’t sound so bad, right? Unfortunately, once you get into the details, you’ll find that they’re quite restrictive, in both calories and the types of food you can eat.
A quick fix often works, at first, because it regulates caloric intake by limiting food types and simplifying options. Sadly, after following a crash diet, there is an increased tendency of weight gain because deprivation diminishes willpower over time. According to the National Eating Disorders Association, dieting is also associated with poor self-esteem and body image, anxiety, depression, and increased risk for mental illnesses, such as anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorder. Restrictive dieting can also reduce your metabolism and lead to increased weight gain after the diet phase is complete. This is why most diets fail to provide long-term weight loss success.
In addition to the psychological effects, dieting, and particularly restrictive dieting, has serious physical effects. Many diets don’t correctly balance macronutrients like protein, carbs, and fat, and a lack of proper macronutrients can affect how your body functions and leave you feeling sluggish and tired. And speaking of feeling tired, mineral imbalances, from a lack of eating the right foods, can create muscle cramps and sleeping problems. You might also miss out on micronutrients and antioxidants, which makes it easier for you to get sick. And lastly, when you’re not getting enough protein, carbs or fat, there’s the potential of losing the muscle mass that you worked so hard to build up, which can in turn decrease your metabolism, muscle tone and strength.
So there you have it: crash diets and quick fixes don’t work. What’s worse is they can actually hurt your health journey in the long term. But wait, if quick fixes don’t work, then what does?
This is where we’d like to introduce the idea of lifestyle and habit change over the “D” word. In addition to all of the above, we also know that our brains respond better to positive words and feelings. The idea of changing your lifestyle and habits puts you in the driver’s seat, where you are choosing to change and doing it because you want to, rather than following along with a restrictive diet that someone prescribed to you. That feels better already, doesn’t it? The very shift in the way you speak about your change could be the key to your success.
Now that you know you want to make a long-term change, rather than follow a short-term plan, where do you start?
The first step is to talk to yourself about what you want to achieve. Because many of us focus so hard on what is right or wrong, we don’t connect to WHY we are making that change. But our “why” is actually the secret sauce to success! The conversation with yourself could look like this:
| Ask yourself... | Example 1 | Example 2 | Example 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| What is your goal? | Lose weight | Make better choices | Have more energy |
| How will that make you feel? | More confident | Capable and empowered | Happier and carefree |
| What will that do for your life? | Help me to take on some new activities | Help me feel more in control and stable | Help me be the kind of parent I want to be |
| Your why: | You want more adventure in your life | You want stability in your life | You want meaningful connection in your life |
Once you understand the goal you want to set, it’s important to have ways to evaluate it, too. There is no wrong way to make a change if you have a clear picture of what you are doing. Asking yourself the below questions will give you a chance to pause just long enough to settle into your decision and move forward with confidence.
Consider the following:
- Is this a long-term change, or short-term?
- How long should I consider sticking with this?
- What could cause me to stumble, and how will I adjust?
- How will I know it’s going well?
- What do I want to learn out of this?
Once you have those questions answered, you’ll have a better idea of your plan of attack for your goal: both how to accomplish it, and how to stop the things that might get in your way. For example, if your goal is to lose those last five pounds, but you know you have a weakness for the doughnuts at your favorite coffeeshop, try only bringing enough cash with you to pay for coffee next time. Here are some of our favorite healthy habits to incorporate when we’re working towards a health goal. Start with two or three of these, whichever best match the goal that you set, and work your way up from there!
- Drink ½ your body weight in water every day
- Sleep 7-9 hours a night
- Calculate your recommended protein intake, and try to meet it every day: (____ your body weight) x .7g = _____ grams of daily protein)
- Improve your mood and negative stress effects with 10 minutes of meditation a day
- Eat 7-10 servings of colorful fruits and vegetables a day
- Walk 10,000 steps a day
- Move 300+ minutes a week
We know what you’re thinking. Drinking enough water, eating fruits and veggies… this is all health advice that you’ve heard before! How is it going to help you reach your goal, right now?
The short answer is, it might not. You won’t immediately lose those last five pounds the same day you start eating better and moving more. But what you will notice is how much more energy you have and how good your body feels. When you start to incorporate more of these practices, you’re not just working towards a short-term goal – you’re building healthy habits for life. Because rather than following a quick-fix or fad diet, making lasting changes is the best way to serve yourself, every time.
