Please for the love of all that is good, STOP DIETING and enjoy your food!

Share this post

This blog post is definitely one that I feel very passionate about, as no doubt at one time or another you might have considered (like most of the female population it seems) signing up/purchasing/joining the very latest “get rid of all that extra weight” diet craze.

Please….for the love of all that is good in the world….STOP IT, save your money instead and purchase something with the money if you must spend it.

You don’t need them, you don’t need the extremes in food consumption, weird drinks, meal replacements, jumping up and down on one leg etc etc they will tell you will cure all your issues in one week! You just need to remember and put into practice these simple words – EAT BETTER & MOVE MORE!

Knowledge is very much power, and over the past few months my understanding of how the body stores, uses and maintains body fat has changed. I knew nothing really, didn’t understand why or how, or knew how to make smarter choices that would be better for me overall. By better of course I mean that I will feel better and stronger as a result.

Technology is a great thing, but I notice more and more on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and every other social media platform these days, that the accounts with the largest followings tend to promote some new kind of diet or weight loss program. These are particularly hugely popular with the “Mummy” demographic that I am part of – for the simple reason that most “Mummies” might be unhappy with their post pregnancy/life bodies. And guess what? As we are already tired from lack of sleep, lack of energy to balance everything we love all the right way – we want the quick fix and are enticed by all those “Dramatic weight loss” photos showing just how easy and quick you can drop half of your body weight.

This week I caught sight of one “diet” strategy that meant basically you ate close to very little (sub 800 calories a day) and drank some strange weird plant juice to “rebalance your body”. How the devil is that healthy? Or good for you? OR prevent you from not killing everyone and everything that tries to speak to you during the 9 day diet period?

It just plain scared me, and I felt hungry just at the thought of it. Reality is that hands down without a doubt, you WILL ABSOLUTELY lose weight if you eat sub your daily requirements (for me that is about 1350 calories) and do nothing else. But that doesn’t mean that method isn’t doing you damage overall or any good really. It will of course take a while, but that is the calories in calories out hard facts.

BUT the reality is when you go to the extremes of diets (not balanced or a proper realistic everyday life eating structure) initially you will lose water weight then your body will go into shock mode thinking famine has arrived. This slows down your metabolism, you start actually storing fat again because your body is trying to still function as before when you eat normally each day, and you will suffer from low energy/mood swings etc etc.

Plus here is the big thing for me – by doing these radically changes to eating and drinking patterns, you will struggle to not put all the weight back on once you eat like a regular human again. What lessons have been learnt if post the dramatic diet of 2 weeks of eating just one apple a day, for example, and you need to return to normal life eating, you are right back to the bad choices again? Nothing learnt at all, or at least nothing that has made a life choice change for you. After all, if you wanted to lose weight/tone up in the first place, chances are your diet wasn’t helping in the first place! We all know that exercise is key to toning up and getting healthier as a result. You want to change your body shape, you are going to have to earn it the hard way and that will take time. Not 2 weeks, perhaps 4 or 8 weeks before any changes.

Those are the hard facts.

Use your time wisely rather than looking for a quick and easy fix that usually costs you money for the information, and read up on advice personal trainers give or weight lifting athletes follow as they have had to find out exactly how to shape their bodies for a goal too.

Find out if you prefer to eat less carbs or more carbs, find out if drinking hot water and lemon help you in the morning, find out what type of exercise you like me (you need to move your body at least a few times a week to use up calories to tone up or lose weight healthily) – all this information will mean you can make better choices for your body and goals and you will stick with them as you have proof they are better than the ones you are making now.

I’m not perfect with my choices yet, but each day I strive to do better. If I struggle for a few days and make some bad choices in my diet then I try to figure out why or what a better solution would be. If I lost 10 lbs by only eating oranges and cucumber water, then no lessons in better nutrition would have been learnt.

For those reasons I know that then overall diets are only short term and unless they teach you something new then old habits are hard to overcome. In whatever you do, make the best choices for you but if a few simple choices are made and results come that way, rather than signing up to the latest diet fade – just think of how smart you will feel and your body will thank you long term.

Love MFF xx

#mblogger #fitmama

Leave a Reply to Rebecca Drennan Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

One thought on “Please for the love of all that is good, STOP DIETING and enjoy your food!”