Why I'll Never Diet Again

 

 

Every other person you talk to will have a different story to tell about the best diet to lose weight fast. Keto, intermittent fasting, Atkins, the list goes on. I'm not going to claim to have tried them all because I haven't, but as someone who has struggled with weight for most of my life, I have tried a fair few. But now I am done. Not because I have reached where I want to be, because I haven't, but because I've come to the conclusion that diets don't work for me. And in my opinion, they don't really work for anyone.

To explain my reasoning, I first have to explain a few things about my weight loss journey. My weight fluctuated a lot when I was younger, and I was always a little bit overweight. In college, though, I stopped yo-yoing quite so much and started to actually lose weight. This continued after I graduated, and naturally, my results got even better after I got engaged. By the time my wedding rolled around, I was nearly where I wanted to be for the first time in my life.

After I got married, the weight gain started to creep up on me again, and before I knew it, I was heavier than I'd been when I started college. And this was when I started trying out every diet that came my way. I tried one that started with a week-long detox where I admittedly lost 6 lbs., but it also made me sick because I was only eating 500 calories a day; I tried Keto, which did have the appeal of some delicious high-fat recipes, but the cutting carbs was hell for my pasta-loving self; and I tried cutting out sugar, which was just a form of personal torture. 

As different as all these diets were, they all ended in approximately the same result. I would stick to it despite how miserable it made me, then some special occassion would come up where I'd allow myself to cheat, I'd overindulge, and then I couldn't go back. Every. Single. Time.

Needless to say, this was very discouraging for me. I'd lost the weight before - why couldn't I come anywhere close to doing it again? And then something clicked. When I'd lost the weight before, I wasn't doing any kind of diet where I had to cut out any kind of food. I still ate the food I loved and snacked when I wanted to. I just watched how much I ate.

Before I did this with tracking the food with my Fitbit app or MyFitnessPal and just monitoring how many calories I took in in a day and ensuring it was less than what I burned. And I always allowed myself to treat myself during the weekend because I didn't want to deprive myself and then end up eating an entire chocolate fountain the first chance I got.

Now I have actually signed up for Weight Watchers because I really like their point system and find it easier than tracking calories. Not that there's anything wrong with using the free methods I'd been using before, but I like that it has a healthy range so that I don't aim too low and under-eat, and it has a bunch of bonus points each week, so I know exactly how much I can splurge each weekend without overindulging.

I haven't made it back to where I want to be, yet, and the progress may not be as fast as I would like, but I'm getting there in a sustainable way. And even more importantly, I'm learning how to love my body and all its curves along the way.

Of course, eating healthy is only one part of a healthy lifestyle, so let me know if you would like me to write another post on exercise routines. And let me know in the comments what your biggest struggle is with eating healthy.