Calorie counting won’t solve all of your problems.
300. 350. 700. 900 — Shoot you weren’t supposed to go over nine-hundred before noon. Just drink water. Drink a lot of water. Then don’t eat your next meal until 2. You’ll go to the gym afterward, and that will free up some space. Yeah, after that you’ll be able to eat 300 more calories. It will be fine.
But you are not fine.
Your mind is exhausted. The thought of consumption is consuming you. You are constantly tracking every crumb on another one of those fitness apps while the fear of guilt lingers over your shoulder waiting for you step outside of your limits.
Fast forward a week or two and you go out to dinner with your friends. Of course, your friend next to you orders dessert. Oozing with everything that you that you have been craving, the temptation becomes too hard to resist.
So you take a bite. Then another.
Those five minutes of pleasure quickly turn into regret that sits heavily at the bottom of your stomach along with the chocolate and peanut butter. You don’t even want to track it on your app because you’re scared of what you’ll see.
You get home and the anxiety takes over. You feel so ashamed of yourself. You start to believe that the bikini you were dying to look good in will no longer fit, so you immediately gear up to go do an hour's worth of cardio at the gym.
Sound familiar? This is what restriction feels like.
However, many of us think that this is “healthy.” We associate meal tracking with discipline and hard work. Well let me tell you — it’s not.
A lot of us want to lose weight. We would all love to fit perfectly in a bodycon dress for formal or upload a smoke bikini picture to piss off an ex. We idolize every Instagram model and create these unrealistic expectations in our heads of what we need to look like in order to be attractive.
In order to meet these expectations, we look for instant gratification. This is where crash dieting, calorie counting and juice cleanses all come into play. Although these extreme measures might do wonders for our figure in the short run, they will do tremendous damage to our minds in the long run.
The minute after you post that picture or the morning after you come back from formal, you’ll fall off the extreme routine. You’ll gain back the weight you tried so hard to lose because you mentally can’t handle it anymore. The diet was too much. The restriction was too intense.
You start to have a terrible relationship with food because you feel that it’s the one thing that taunts you. You try to diet again… and again… and again. You are hoping that something will work, but it just never does. You are in this never ending cycle and you decide to just give up.
This, my friends, is why dieting does not work. This is why calorie counting won’t solve all of your
You’ve probably heard the saying, “fitness is a lifestyle, not a diet.” I know I’ve heard this over a thousand times by now. Despite the cliche, it’s 100% true. If you want to lose weight and keep off that weight, you need to learn how to adjust your lifestyle the correct way. You need to incorporate balance.
This might look like slowly trading your cans of Coke for cans of La Croix (or even better yet just plain water, but let’s be realistic here). Instead of white bread, you grab for twelve-grain. You still can have your sweets but in smaller portions here and there.
Make protein pancakes at home instead of regular pancakes from a brunch club. Start off by getting up and walking your dog more. Then maybe start going to the gym twice a week with a friend. Then three times. Maybe try a yoga class. Find what works for you.
It is a slow process, but it is a process that you will adapt to. Eventually, you won’t recognize your healthy choices as a diet, but as a normal part of your everyday routine. You’ll lose weight the correct way.
The best part? You will be able to keep that weight off. You will start to increase your metabolism naturally and your overall health (including mental health) will improve tremendously. Stop searching for immediate results. Over time, you will learn what works best for your body and what doesn’t. It’s all a part of a learning curve.
And if you want to have a bite of your friend’s dessert, just order your own.