I never "go on a diet." Not only does it sound like the opposite of fun, it adds a moral quandary to food consumption that does more harm than good. All of a sudden eating certain foods is "bad" and when you do slip and eat the "bad" food it makes you feel bad about yourself. And once you feel down about it. As if you failed life by eating a cookie. You're more likely to lose your confidence, calling the whole day a wash and making poor decisions moving forward.
The negative effects of dieting go beyond eating. The lose of confidence from slipping up on your diet can spill over into other areas of your life and make you feel like you're less likely to achieve other goals you've set out as well.
I can go on and on about the unwelcome mental side effects that come with dieting but let's steer things towards what you can do instead.
Instead of saying "I won't eat x this year" or "I'm going to follow x diet this year" ask yourself what kind of life do you want this year? Think of why making healthier choices can help you with your larger goals in life? It's one thing to say "I'm not drinking soda this year." And an entirely different thing to say "Soda keeps me up at night. I need to cut back so I can sleep better and have a more productive day the next day."
What I've been focusing on for the last 6 months is after eating something asking myself "How does this food make me feel?" or "What do I want out of life and how can small changes in what I eat help you get there?" It's questions like these that have helped me have a healthier and more balanced relationship with myself and my food. This kind of question will also help you cope with making bad decisions as life is about experimentation and moderation and it's going to take eating a lot of bad food to understand it's effect on you and engrain into your head why you wouldn't want to eat as much of that food moving forward.
I'm optimistic that will a simple reframe of how we approach food and diet we can all have a happier and healthier relationship with our food in 2018.
Happy New Years!
