The Diet Cycle
Does the above look familiar at all? If so, please know that you are not alone. The diet cycle is a trap that so many of us get caught in - not because we lack willpower, but due to our biology.
Research has shown that long-term <20% of dieters maintain weight loss after one year, even less after two years (1). We may find ourselves going round and round the diet cycle.
Let’s take a look at the diet cycle step-by-step:
Desire to Be smaller / pursue the socially constructed beauty ideal - This vicious cycle all begins with the desire to achieve the thin ideal or to lose weight. This is fuelled by diet culture and societal pressures to look a certain way to achieve the current beauty ideal. For example, you have the goal to be size X by summer and you’re determined to achieve it. Diet culture sells us the lie that if we reach this beauty ideal we will be happy, “healthy” and successful - unfortunately, this is rarely the reality.
Start the Diet - You start a new diet plan and you feel really good about it. You’re motivated and determined. It feels like you’re doing something right and you have control over something. Maybe others compliment your efforts or changes in your appearance. These compliments make you feel great, and perhaps a little bit worried about what you looked like before - it’s a double-edged sword. The biological and psychological effects of restriction haven’t really set in yet.
Hunger and Cravings - it doesn’t take long for to effects of restriction to kick in. You’re finding the rules of your new “lifestyle” to be very restrictive and you’re feeling low on energy. Perhaps you want to go out with friends, but you’re worried about the food or missing the gym the next day. Perhaps you feel a bit isolated and down. You’re thinking about food all the time and are constantly feeling hungry and a bit on edge.
Loss of control - you have a difficult day and all of a sudden you can’t resist the ice cream in the freezer. You think F**K this and pick up a load of your favourite foods from the shops. You eat and eat all the foods that you haven’t been able to stop thinking about. You devour them vowing to be good again tomorrow. This can last a period of days to weeks and you feel out of control around food due to all the built-up deprivation. All the rules of your diet have gone out the window.
Guilt - you feel guilt and shame for breaking your self-imposed diet rules and for not having enough “willpower” to keep at it. You blame yourself and feel ashamed for “overeating”, not realising that the restrictive eating is causing the problem. Over time you noticed that you’ve gained some weight, maybe more than you started your diet with.
In fact, 1/3 - 2/3 of dieters end up regaining the weight lost plus more (2). This is due to the body’s clever inbuilt mechanism to help us survive periods of famine in hunter-gatherer times. You vow to go on another diet, maybe this time it’s stricter rules or a different one altogether. The diet cycle begins all over again, only this time you are sure this will be the diet that you’ll stick to. But the cycle goes around again and again until you decide to break it and let go of diet.
Breaking the Cycle
If this all sounds familiar to you please remember again that you are not alone and this isn’t an issue of willpower but biology. Intuitive Eating is an alternative framework that helps move individuals away from dieting and re-define authentic health away from all of the traps dieting sets which sets us up to overeat (3).
Intuitive Eating provides individuals with tools and skills to help improve their relationship with food and their body. Research has shown that intuitive eaters have better:
Positive emotional functioning.
Life satisfaction.
Mental health.
Blood cholesterol levels.
Blood pressure.
Eat a greater variety of foods (4).
Know that there is a way to break this vicious diet cycle and that there is so much more to life than trying to shrink your body.
If you’re struggling with breaking the diet cycle and would like some extra support reach out to book an appointment.
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