Why Diets Don’t Work + What You Can Do Instead

Outway family. Lisa here hoping to kind of set the tone for a very noisy holiday season into new year when it comes to diet, changing your body, and kind of finding you at the time where you feel your absolute worst after the holidays. You feel tired, you feel fatigued, do you feel run down? Your clothes are maybe starting to fit tightly, and this is your chance to change it all and to start the year on the right foot. I think we all know that you know the new year,

new body. The new year's resolutions are often centered around weight and body changes. So I hope today to just be your voice of reason to help you remember what we forget when that fear sneaks in, which is the facts. The fact is that diets don't work. They throw us into a cycle that we ultimately find ourselves back at the start again. And I think until we really understand see that call it out, get really conscious about it, we're going to just be thrown into that cycle, unfortunately

for some through the rest of their lives. And I know that our impact on out way we reached teenagers to fifty sixty seventy year old women, And what I find fascinating is that the seventy year old women are here saying I regret not getting ahold of this situation sooner, and I think this speaks volumes to the younger generations where we're really just kind of it's hard to see the long term picture that this could go on for the rest of our lives because the diets always sell

us on it will be better after this. But when we look at people in this community who have been through it, who are still going through it, I think it really sheds insight into how insidious, how ongoing, how the toll that this can take on us if we don't kind of take control of it ourselves. So, like I said, I know that this is a scary, frightening time of year where you don't feel good, you don't like the way you look, you don't like the way you feel, and this is the time to take action.

There are discounts, there are you know, so many promotions going on to reel you in. So I hope today to really again shine light on the science of why diet don't work, because I think ultimately we end up feeling like the failures, when in reality it's the system. So let's just view the cycle real fast, and then we're going to go into the scientific reasons that they actually don't work and talk about what you can do differently. This year, I am hosting again my fourth and noise

Hunger Fullness course. It's going to begin January nine on Sunday. And this course is not a diet. It's about learning to listen to your body signals when it comes to feeling hungry and feeling full. My approach to ditching diets was coming home to my body and its cues. That being said, we all know that that's really really hard, especially when we've been disconnected for such a long time. So for me, these are tools that I use every single day to guide me to and away from food.

How much I need when I need it, which are variables that are always changing, and before I learned to work in tangent with my body, I didn't believe that it could do that. So I was feeding myself the same thing every single day, feeling frustrated when I was still hungry, finding myself binging constantly full just a nightmare.

But now that I've become in touch with these cues that I've reconnected with over time and work, it's an amazing guide that has freed me to live my life and just simply return to during times of chaotic periods where I find myself disconnected. I found the route home and I want to hopefully share that with you. So that's going to start January nine. I'll link that below and discount code for anybody who is interested. But let me jump into the contents of today, which is why

diets don't work. So we we know the cycle. Let's just take a good overview from the top. When we go on any sort of diet or plan, we make changes, and that feels really empowering to take control. After a period of feeling really out of control, we actually might find that they work. We're losing the weight, our pants are starting to fit, things are going really well. We don't even feel two trapped by whatever type of restrictions

or rules that we've put into place. This could be a day, this could be a week, this could be six months to a year, until suddenly it's not working anymore. We realize that our lives have been shrunk in, or we're starting to want other foods and feel restricted, we're starting to think about food more and more and more. Whatever it is, we're having that that place where suddenly it's not so easy to not eat this or just eat that or whatever rules are in place, and then

we break. We have our what the heck moment where we say, what the heck? I already at up. I might as well continue because this feels so good, and this could look different depending on the diet that you're on. For restrictive diets, just having an abundance of calories or energy come back in is going to feel really good because your body is physically looking physiologically in need of

more calories. So when it feels you giving it to them, it can say more and more and more and more and more so that they can store it for the times when there are deprivation. If you're on a type of diet, plan where you are eating sufficient calories, but certain foods are off limit. Your psychologically being hacked because you know that you're not going to be able to have that food come tomorrow or whenever your diet restarts. So again you're in that more and more and more

and more and more scarcity mindset. You know you're going to start over again. And as soon as that cycles over, where you you know, get over that high of enjoying whatever you allowed yourself to have, you find yourself back in the feeling crappy, feeling guilty, feeling like a failure

place where you start all over again. We make the changes, they work, we feel empowered, and we then you know, go right back into that what the heck moment to find ourselves right back here again and to wash rents repeat cycle that happened a million times throughout our lives. I mean, as a thirty three year old now, I can't tell you how many times I went through this cycle in my early twenties. But in order to break free, we need to see the cycle from that bird's eye view.

So let's look at our lives and see how many times we've been in that cycle and failed to realize that perhaps we're not the problem, but the plan is. So do you know why weight Watchers is such a successful business while it's still in business, despite being so old and dated. It's so successful because it is built on customer failure. They know that you will fail and do you know what that means? For weight Watchers? It means that you will come back again and again and again.

And do you know what else that is? That is a sign of a profitable business. So this is literally part of their business plan. They are, like any other type of business, making money on your return, but in this business it means your failure means being a return customer. And I want you to think about that, because I know not everything is structured like weight Watchers. There's new and all these other types of paid or unpaid type of things. But think about what it means for a

business to be built on your failure. And I hope that that sticks with you in some way because it's it's really really powerful and it says a lot, and I hope it gets you a little bit frustrated as to where you possibly have been giving your money if weight Watchers is something for you, but where you've invested your time I should say for those of us who have no connection to weight Watchers, that wasn't one that

I ever did. But I just find that so so so fascinating, as many of America spends hundreds thousands of dollars into this company that's rooted in their success, I put in quotes, which is actually their failure. So yes, they'll take your testimonials when you're six months out or a year out and you've lost all the weight, but do they follow up after two years or three years? And a lot of the research in nutrition and weight

loss does the same exact thing. They track the success immediately, but they don't look at the long term picture of six months, a year longer. And we know that diet don't work. We know that they don't lead to sustained weight loss over time, which leads us back into that cycle that we need to break free from in order to live our freaking lives. Like if this pandemic has taught us anything, which I would really love for it to go away, and I think the lessons have been learned,

thank you very much, coronavirus um. But if it has taught us anything, I think it has taught us about time. What we care about how little time we get on this earth and how much of it goes to soul sucking activities and thoughts. So I hope by now we are starting to at least wake up to the idea that we deserve and we need to make a life that's better for ourselves with more freedom and more peace. So let's talk about why diets don't work. And I

won't get into any and crazy here. I want to keep it brief because I want you to just hear me in your mind. As soon as the thoughts start to trickle in, you have these light bulbs going off that say, wait, no, I'm not going to do that because I know what happens, or I'm not going to do that because I know how it really works. So let's get into it. Reason number one is we need enough calories to survive. Lots of diets are rooted in restriction,

oftentimes restriction of calories food energy. That's what calories means. All it is is the energy that we obtain from food. That's the energy that we need to feel good in our bodies. I call it the life force juice because when you are energizing your body with calories, energy you feel energized, but you're not going to feel very energized if you're not putting enough calories into your body. But the calories aren't just for that energy that we know

and love and want. It's also necessary for our bodies to perform it's vital everyday functions. So every thing, every single second of the day, our bodies are fighting to work create for cells are working incredibly to support us, and it needs the calories the energy to do that. So when the body notices that it's not getting enough energy coming in, it's going to do what it can

to protect you. And protecting you means it's going to become more efficient with the limited energy that you're giving it. That means, stay with me for a second, that your metabolism is actually going to slow down. So your body working more efficiently with less calories available means a slower metabolism.

You eating less means a slower metabolism. Okay, because your body doesn't know when you're going to feed it again or when it's going to have enough, so it starts hoarding onto what it has and it slows down all of its processes. It says, we can't work as fast because we don't have enough energy, so we are going to work more slowly. So then your food comes in and it working more slowly, not digesting and breaking it

down as fast. Right, So by restricting, and again you're not going to notice this in a day or a week or maybe a month, but after you have that initial weight loss, you're going to find yourself plateau ng or even gaining weight. And that's because your body has gotten smarter. And I do mean smarter. You can't outsmart your body. It's gotten more smarter because its job is to keep you alive, so it's doing what it needs to do. In addition, your hormones are going to work

to support your body working more quote unquote efficiently. That doesn't mean supporting your weight loss. So one of the things that happens is we have a hormone called leptin. So leptin is the hormone that lets us know when we are full, when we've had enough. So when leptin is high, we are all good on energy. When leptin is low, it's triggering the body that we need more to eat. It's going to trigger your appetite to increase.

So when we don't eat enough, our body is becoming lower, less efficient, our metabolism is slowing down, and our hormones are sending signals out to eat more. So we're working against ourselves with this new system that we've created effectively because we're going up against exactly what we need. So restriction is not going to work. It's going to slow your metabolism down and make you feel hungrier, frustrating you

thinking that you're the problem when really you're not. And your body, by the way, is working on your side, not the side that you wanted on to shrink your body or change it, but keeping you alive and well the best that it possibly can. Reason number two is because restriction leads to muscle breakdown. So when your body isn't getting enough energy from you're not feeding it enough,

it's going to get resourceful all around our body. In our muscles, we have usable energy that we can break down and used to perform those vital functions that we talked about. Now, the body is smart, so it's going to go searching for your body and go into those muscle pocket and convert the muscle into that usable energy. Now that might be like, Okay, that's cool, but that's

going to mean less muscle tone for you. And while you may not care about that if you're listening in your teens or twenties, as you get older, having muscle feeling strong, having your body feel good in daily activities is really really key. And I speak to somebody who I probably wouldn't have cared about this in my early twenties, but in my thirties not such a huge leap away

from that. I know I need to feel strong and feel good in my body in order to perform daily functions like picking my daughter up, reaching down, and I want to be able to chase her and run after her and all these things. And I think most of us would agree that we want to build muscle. And we have to realize that we're tapping into these these stores when we don't feed ourselves. So you don't want your muscles withering away. It's not just for aesthetic reasons,

but for you living your life. We need to nourish our body. These are muscles are bones. We have to move away from the idea that health means just losing weight and recognize all the various physical destruction that's actually a really good word to use here that happens when we chase this one end goal. Reason number three that diets don't work, or because our bodies are not calculators. We can't treat them like a car where we put x amount of gas and we know exactly how far

that gas is going to get us. Bodies are incredibly complex and there are a ton of factors that affect how many calories we absorb. The body is in a constant state of flux, so that means how many calories you are taking in from a food may change over time. Your needs change over time. You might need more or less per day, per week, per month, per year, especially over your life cycle. Ourselves are constantly turning over, bones lose and gain calcium, our hormones fluctuate up and down

to support us, and all of this. It takes energy to make this all happen. You and I could eat the same thing every single day, but we won't take in the same amount of calories, which goes to show and one of the reasons why eating a certain amount of calories based off the nutrition fact panel is just a waste of time. You don't know exactly what you're getting, even though they give us this nice panel of information that tells us that this food has two calories of

carbs eight grams of sugar. That's not a hard fact. That is a guestimate at best, and it can be off by up to to still be in f DA regulations. So recognize that you're not a calculator. Your body is in a constant stage of flux. It changes over time, and the best thing that you can do to support

it is to listen to it. Before we wrap up episode, I want to make sure that we talk about what you can do to feel really good this year, and I want to give you some tips to spot a diet in disguise, so things that you can do to feel good this year. I'm not here to say that you feel like crap today and you should continue feeling

like crap and there's no way out of that. I'm here to help you work in tangent with your body and your health if that's something that you want to pursue, and show you that health is not reduced to eating less or a diet. Health We need to start looking at from a full picture view point here, and that doesn't mean that we abandoned food. I think food can be a beautiful part of this conversation, but we need

to really shift the way we think about food. So I want you to focus, perhaps on the quality of the food that you're eating. And i'd also want to remind you that some of the healthiest foods are the highest in calories. So thinking about things like avocados and nuts and seeds, these are all packed with neutral riant and fatty acids, which are so important for making hormones and lubricating our joints and helping us produce neurotransmitters in

the brand I mean everything. A lot of these high calorie foods that we might be afraid of because of what previous diets have told us are actually incredibly nourishing and healthy for us. So I want to remind you that quality of food is not synonymous with calories in the food. I want to empower you too. I know that it's winter for a lot of us here and this might be a little bit more difficult, but eating foods as close to the source that we can without

being dogmatic or going overboard here. So I'm not here to say cut out every source of processed food, packaged food, or anything, but can you take a little bit of time to prep your food in the beginning of the week, thinking about things that you like. Do you like rice and potatoes? And can you cut your vegetables so that they're easy to grab from the fridge. Can you buy fresh apples or fruits or whatever is available for you so that you're eating lots of food that is quite

literally alive from nature. And I say that with a huge asterisk. Again, that doesn't mean going overboard with it like I have in my past. That means just filling your plate with goodness, without a sense of restriction, and

connecting to what nature has provided for us. I'm a huge believer in food is close to nature because I believe that it's specifically designed for our human consumption and our bodies know exactly what to do with it, and it makes us feel really really good and also just interacts perfectly with our bodies, like it's meant for us

to eat. And I just think, I feel so grateful that food can do such amazing things for us after for so long thinking that food had, you know, little to no purpose, and my job was just to eat as little of it as possible. Other than food, let's talk about sleep. Sleep is so, so, so so important. I know that this is a stressful time of year, but focusing on sleep and sleep hygiene, so what you do around bedtime, what you do in the morning are all going to really add up to your quality of sleep.

It's not about quantity in hours, It's about the depth of sleep, which is so important for your brain and your hormones. So much happens. I talked about the glimphatic system all the time, which is kind of like this waste removal system that happens but only when you sleep. So by thinking, by me doing this podcast, I'm accumulating waste in my brain, and in order to take that trash out, I gotta go to sleep. I mean, we all know that we feel better on a good night's sleep,

but how many of us are actually prioritizing it. I personally like to, for the most part, stay away from the television as long as I can put my cell phone in the bathroom instead of right next to my bed. I like to read a book before bed. I'd like to spray my pillow with some pillow spray. I really set the mood um somebody who comes from a history of not sleeping for most of my life, so sleep is incredibly, incredibly important and when it comes to wait cravings,

all that stuff. Sleep plays are really important role. Not to mention mood, which we all know how cranky we can get when we feel like we are sleep deprived, and we might not realize that that crankiness is coming from a state of sleep deprivation. But I think a lot of times it really is relationships we are born

to connect with other people. Oftentimes diets isolate us. We can't eat certain foods, so we don't attend certain things, or we're just too consumed in our own mindset of thinking about what we should eat that we forget to check on other people. But perhaps this year, take a moment to really think about the relationships in your life. Think about who you're grateful for, Tell them that you're grateful for them. Take time to nourish those relationships. They

are key for our health and well being. I would love to recommend cell phone free time or social media time. I am a huge proponent and believer in taking time off of your phone. There that's leaving it behind when you go for a walk, or taking if you can, oh day or week off. I've gone weeks at a time before I had a baby that was certainly a lot simpler. So to anybody who has a life that may allow for literally powering off, I highly suggest that. But if that's too much for you, social media breaks

are incredibly important in tuning into yourself. Nourishing your nervous system is something I talk about. Our phones cause us to spike in adrenaline and cortisol, all the uppity uppity hormones that make us feel really stressed, and we might not realize that that's happening. By the way, and most importantly, social media can be really noisy this time of year, So perhaps taking some time to just focus on you and reduce that noise around you, Maybe reading some books

for pleasure. When is the last time you allowed yourself to indulge in a fiction novel? I love fiction. Maybe that's not your thing, but reading a book is so good for us, good for that nervous system, good for our hormones, and sin is a relaxing message to our body that we are safe, that we are okay. Taking a break from that hustle hustle bustle, especially after the busy holiday season, and I would love to encourage you

to focus on movement that feels good. Notice what feels good for you day to day, and notice what doesn't, and anything that doesn't, just ditch. And maybe that means you rest for the day, or maybe it means you pick up a different activity. But I want you to really take a moment here to check with yourself what feels good and if it doesn't feel good, why am I doing it? Okay? I encourage you, please please, please

please please. That's a huge one because movement is so so, so so good for us in a way to tune into our body's wisdom. But it could also be a way that we abuse our bodies and become more disconnected to them than ever before. It's a fine line there. Okay, I'm gonna leave you with how to spot a diet in disguise. So there's lots of diets out there that aren't as obvious as weight watchers. And as time goes by, uh, there's always more and more popping up. So I feel

like giving you a list wouldn't even be helpful. Instead, I'll provide you with just something to think about as you are thinking about starting this new plan that worked for all of your friends or your family or a coworker, how do spot a diet in disguise. If it doesn't provide tools for you to listen to your own body's wisdom, it is a diet. If it mocks the idea of mindful or intuitive eating, it's probably a diet. If it's a prescriptive in the amount of food you should eat

per day, per meal, or snack. So if you're literally out there counting your almonds, measuring a food, weighing it, it is a diet. If weight loss is the primary goal of how they will define your success on it, but they're calling it a health plan or about or a lifestyle, it's probably a diet. If they perpetuate the idea that a smaller body is better for all bodies, it's probably a diet. If they emphasize that eating certain foods will make you feel full verse actually help you

be satisfied or actually nourished, it's probably a diet. If they're looking for ways or providing tricks for you to trick your body, it's probably a diet. If there are certain foods that you need to eat with every single meal, it's probably a diet. If the portion sizes are arbitrary and the same for every single person. It's probably a diet. If it cuts out or demonizes whole food groups, carbs, fats, proteins, it's probably a diet. Anything that doesn't feel good is

probably going to be a diet. And again, it might feel good in the beginning because it's providing you with that sense of control after a season of feeling really out of control, but that control is an illusion. That control quickly becomes captivity. That captivity sends you back into the cycle of dieting that takes you right back to the beginning again, where you jump back again and think that you're the problem. So I hope, so so so much that this helped you remember that you're not the

problem that the diet is. I hope it provided you with hard reasoning as to why diets don't work. I hope that it provided you with some tools for other things that you could focus on to take good care of yourself and feel good. And I hope it reminded you that you matter, and your time on this earth matters, and what you do with it is far more important than how you shrink your body. Thank you for joining

me on this episode. I'm wishing you all a happy, happy New Year and sending you my love, and Amy sends her love as well. Thanks for joining, and we'll see you next week. On that way,