It’s at this time of year when I tend to break out in a cold sweat a lot more than usual. Not just because it’s usually the exact time of year the boiler decides to check out and require urgent and expensive attention, but also because it’s the time of year when people seem to have full lobotomies over health, fitness and weight control. And they all start jumping on diet trends…
Here’s a sample of conversations I’ve had with new clients approaching me so far this January:
“I want to lose weight so I’m only eating carbs between 8am and 12pm.”
“I just skip all meals and eat only fruit and coffee.”
“I’ve gone gluten-free and vegan and I’m fasting two days a week because that is healthy from what I’ve heard.”
Society continuously engages in low level encouragement of eating disorders.
That’s a bold statement. But it’s true.
We justify times of complete indulgence – like Christmas and holidays – and then encourage times of famine and fast to “make up” for it later. We talk about “working off” our donuts in the gym like exercise is a punishment. We send tidal waves of “likes” to the phoney “What I eat in a day” posts of the sponsored, sell-out, scantily clad and PTs out there – and yet what we see is nothing but whole foods and unprocessed plants. We love to get engaged with a faddy “clean eating” diet or a “detox” or a “cleanse”.
And what’s the result?
The notion that we should all be yo-yo-ing continuously when it comes to our health.
But we shouldn’t be. Diet trends are one sure fire way to engage with yo-yo dieting, but as well know, that’s a rubbish way to live.
We should be building habits that enable us to be comfortable with fluctuating weights. Habits that encourage health but allow us to enjoy sociable time with friends and still go to the gym the next day and enjoy the workout as a privilege, not a punishment. We should be building habits that take us away from guilt, fear, shame and anxiety around food. We should be building confident habits that allow us to look past faddy diets and instead follow our own path to our own goals embracing our own biology and our own reference frame.
People will always pray on your insecurities.
In the work I do, the sad truth is that I’ve seen too many people who have been messed up by branded diet trends, starvation diets, people who want to make a buck by praying of easy insecurities. It’s January. Insecurity about body weight and eating is all over the place, it’s easy money!
And that’s what makes me break into a cold sweat.
Because in January, people expect miracles. They want me to conform to the indulgence/punishment cycle of Christmas and New Year. And I won’t do it. Instead, I come to you and ask you the questions about what you REALLY want from yourself, from me. What’s REALLY stopped you from improving your health and getting into shape and what would REALLY make you happy.
So next time you consider some crazy restrictive diet trend in a quick bid to achieve something. Stop. Ask yourself some questions:
1. What do I really want from this?
2. What will this do for me in the long term?
3. Am I just a victim of a crazy social narrative right now…?
And if you want some more help on this one, go ahead and take the Super Human scorecard, to help evaluate where you are now, before you start planning how to get somewhere else…