In e-book, “The Diet Trap” we started by asking you the question: Are you trapped in diet thinking?
What is The Diet Trap?
First it’s not one trap; it’s the many myths the food and diet industries have taught us – like “a calorie is a calorie.”
All calories are not created equal, maybe in terms of energy released in a calorimeter (the most common device for measuring the heat of combustion or caloric value of a material). But our bodies treat them differently, depending on their nutrient “packaging.”
Calorie theory doesn’t account for what the human body cannot absorb, or what is used in the digestive process or what the body can utilize in the first place vs. what it will store as excess weight and be forced to eliminate from the body if it can even do so, in an unhealthy state.
Calorie theory does not consider the impact empty, nutrient-poor calories have on the body when they overwhelm and poison our bodies and compromise our health. Most conversations about calories don’t even discuss the phytochemicals that determine whether a food is really health promoting and protecting or not.
Diet traps are popular “common-sense” answers (like “eat less”, often combined with “exercise more”) that seem innocuous and beneficial – and at face value make sense as a solution to overweight, but not if your diet is nutrient poor and your lifestyle is not balanced and healthy.
They’re false information we’ve been fed all our lives – like the idea that you have to eat meat and dairy everyday to lose weight, get protein and calcium to grow and build strong bones and be healthy…
They’re short-term methods with negative long-term effects. Low-carb, low-cal and low-fat diets, where we manipulate nutrient and caloric concentrations in extreme ways, all fit into this category! Even if they masquerade as “lifestyles,” they’re still diet traps!
They’re tricks we think help us keep our weight down, but don’t – like using caffeine as an appetite suppressant only to overeat later, because we’ve confused our hunger signals and made ourselves sick.
They’re beliefs that sabotage our quality of life and our success – like thinking that losing weight is about willpower, motivation or self-control alone. You can’t measure anyone’s will power or self-control by looking solely at their weight or when they are under the influence of nutrient poor foods.
Diet traps are powerful food, weight and fitness beliefs and behaviors that keep us overweight and obsessed with losing weight.
Diet Traps snare not only our health and our self-esteem, but our ability to perform at a high level. They keep us stuck.
They include commercial diets, but they’re not limited to them by any means.
They are rituals, tactics and marketing messages that induce unnatural weight loss or promote unhealthy, unsustainable weight management, because in most cases they keep us dependent on the nutrient-poor and barren foods that are at the root of the problem. Meanwhile those messages sell you short, thinking that “you can’t handle the truth” or that you’ll never buy the fact that our diet needs to be comprised of 90% or more, vegetables, fruits, bean, legumes, raw nuts and seeds and whole grains.
And the consequences are clear: weight gain, disease, depression, sickness – and so many more.
Diet Traps are unsuccessful strategies because they don’t free us from our food addictions or fulfill our complete nutrient needs. They promise success and freedom, but don’t deliver anything but short term weight loss. And that is trap! For anyone wanting to lose weight, without changing their lifestyle, they will fall for short term weight loss strategies all the time.
Today, the “truth teller” approach is to point out all the “traps” and then sell you right back into one. That is not going to happen here, especially when you get free of the ultimate diet trap!
If you haven’t read “The Diet Trap” go ahead and do so, then I would love to hear your thoughts, and even some of the diet traps that you have identified.
Let’s us know!