How to avoid the fight of the eternal diet
It seems like every day there is a new diet book, approach, point of view, or opinion thrown right in our faces. The promises are huge. Drop a dress size in a week. Lose 7 pounds in 7 days. Change your life forever.
Who knows? You may be ‘on’ a diet. And who can blame you? You want results – FAST! These ‘diets’ promise you exactly that with their fluorescent book covers, powerful testimonials and ‘proven’ strategies for success.
You immerse yourself in them. You can even become a serial dietitian (or is that a ‘cereal’ dietitian? I have to be careful, no pun intended, with a well-known cereal producer’s diet ‘Go down a size eating two bowls of dead food’)
Atkins, The Zone, The Cabbage Soup, The Grapefruit, what’s next?
It can become a frustrating habit. The one that throws good, bad, indifferent or no results for people. You can drop the spirit and get back into the habit of binge sugaring and drinking 5 cups of coffee to ‘get me back’.
Our experience with serial dieters is that, like the diet itself, they are picky eaters.
When a person says that he follows a specific diet, in reality he is not. They are in a piecemeal version. The individual can take the parts they like and ignore the rest. Take for example the Atkins. We all know this is famous for its breakfast of ribs with sausage and eggs.
I would hazard a guess that most people would be excited about this. However, the devil is in the details. What about the excessive amount of vegetables that are recommended along with a certain formula of water to help with the detoxification process?
It’s like giving you an apple pie recipe and then making the rhubarb crumble.
My point is simple. For any diet to be successful, and in fact most, if not all, you need to stick to it 95% of the time.
How do you measure this? Well, we use a compatible grid. Let’s say you eat 3 meals a day for 7 days a week. There are 21 meals. 95% compliance means 2 meals where you can avoid the rules. There is not much room for manoeuvre. So ask yourself: do you fully understand what is being asked of you and have you followed all the rules 95% of the time?
Here is my problem with diets. You end up chasing more than one rabbit at a time.
This is fine if you are speaking in short periods of time, say 2 weeks. Beyond that though, I would begin to question compliance. The proof is really in what the results say.
We approach nutrition from a behavioral point of view by asking our clients to focus on one habit at a time. A week can be the water intake. The next may be breakfast. In total, there are 10 habits for between 7 and 21 days per habit.
Why this time period? Well, some of us have that fiery intrinsic level of motivation to make a change right away. For 7 days they can focus their efforts on making a change before these habits become permanent. For some it may take a little longer, ie 21 days. In fact, studies have shown that habits take about this long to form.
Like any habit, nutrition is no different. It takes time to build habits like buying fresh groceries twice a week or cooking in bulk and taking leftovers to work.
However, the difference between this approach and all diet books is that it is ultimately more satisfying. Imagine tackling one habit a week for 10 weeks. In 10 weeks you will have completely overhauled your eating habits, long-term. That could mean the difference between changing the weight or not.
Like all goals, success brings more success and there is nothing more rewarding than setting a goal and increasing your achievements.
So it goes without saying that if you’re thinking of trying a diet, check with a healthy doctor first, then make sure you hold yourself accountable and can measure your results with it. However, if you know you have a terribly sweet tooth or just find it hard to eat right away, a diet book won’t help. Behavior changes with the creation of new habits will.