Help your clients experience FREEDOM from Food Addiction.

But… “Shelly-Anne a friend of mine just lost 25 pounds in ten days with this keto-vita-macro-vegan diet and my cousin lost almost 30 pounds. How can you say diets don't work?” 

If you ask your friends what else they lost along with those pounds their answer may be along the lines of “the joy of living”

So why is it so difficult to stick to a diet?

1. Restriction is not sustainable.

Diets require your clients to invest a ton of energy in planning, weighing, classifying, calculating, measuring, and tracking meals. It would be much better for them to invest these resources into living a vibrant life. This is one of the main reasons your clients can not stick to their diets for the long term; it is just not a sustainable solution for health and wellness. Not everyone can put in this type of energy day in and day out, nor is it a solution that works for all. 

Dieting may result in a specific number on the scale, but it usually comes at the cost of damaging your metabolism. I know this first hand. Now it's harder to lose weight than ever before. To lose weight you need adequate energy which a diet with restrictions may not provide.  All too often people are consuming far too few calories thinking it's the way to achieve results. Which puts their bodies into starvation mode, storing every calorie consumed. The exact opposite of what we want to happen.

Restrictive diets also do not consider brain chemistry and the role that different foods have on you. They only have two labels for everything: “good food” (on the diet plan) and “bad food” (whatever is not on the diet plan) with complete disregard as to what your clients really are hungry for.

2. Diets are not meant to address the root cause of what is underneath food behavior.

Sometimes we eat because of anxiety or stress, or even due to an underlying health condition that makes us crave a certain food, and diets will never have a “fix” for that. Your clients are individuals, with individual needs that must be covered, but not only food-related needs, we are talking about your emotions and how a restrictive diet can impact them negatively, creating guilt and stress which then fuels the desire to eat even more.

This vicious cycle may even be tied to childhood memories. Many adults can remember their parents trying to restrict or change the way they ate as a child. Many recall memories of being in the “clean your plate club” or hearing comments about their body size which is known as fat shaming.

These experiences have a huge impact on how your clients feel about themselves and their bodies, and will certainly influence their eating behavior as kids; which often continues into adulthood.

3.- The processed food industry is not helping at all.

I get it, they are a business and they need to profit, but going as far as using characteristics like ‘vanishing caloric density’ and ‘pleasing mouth feel,’ as well as adding irresistible fats, sugars, and salts to their products (yes, that includes the low-fat, low-sugar, low sodium versions) is plain greed.

Food companies literally engineer foods to be perfectly addictive. They work hard to create the perfect amount of sweet-salt-fat that would send us over the moon, and of course, have their products flying off the shelf.

But if diets are not the answer… What can we do? 

One thing that is clear is that education about food can only take you to a certain point, clients need to take different actions that will support them to create success with their health and wellness goals.

If you are ready to jump into action and start supporting clients who suffer from Food Addiction in a way that actually is helpful? Join our next cohort and become a Certified Professional Food Addiction Coach.

Read more about it here…