People often yo-yo diet because when they decide to make a change they select a one size fits all plan or diet. It might be keto, whole 30, FODMAP, AIP, ideal protein, weight watchers….you name it.
It always seems to start with a feeling, a sense of urgency, that comes from an onslaught of negative thoughts about your body or symptoms your body might have like undesired weight, skin conditions, bloating or diarrhea. Then, you decide that this one diet that you’ve found is the answer. It is the only answer, the key, to get you to where you want to be. So you decide to put all of your energy and effort into doing this diet. Your momentum only lasts for a certain amount of time. Maybe it’s thirty days or three months or just two days, the approximate time I lasted on the master cleanse. It could be gradual or happen in an instant, but you quit the diet thinking there’s something wrong with it or worse…you think something is wrong with you which is not great for your mental health.
Regardless, it becomes clear that the diet is not sustainable for you to keep doing for the rest of your life. Diets made for the masses are usually pretty restrictive and are not something most people know how to do for life especially if they have not done the thought work of managing their mind and also processing emotions that come along with our attachments to food and our body. This causes a return to the default ways of overeating, eating feelings, choosing foods or practices that aren’t really serving you like overindulging in sugar and alcohol or whatever your default looks like.
Diets made for the masses are usually pretty restrictive and are not something most people know how to do for life especially if they have not done the thought work of managing their mind and also processing emotions that come along with our attachments to food and our body.
-Jessica Pearson Food & Life Coach
Well all just go back to living our lives and we think we’re having fun, we tell ourselves that we are free because there are no food rules but eventually we feel bad again. Something happens where we regain the weight or our other symptoms return and we become unhappy again. We hope that happiness is at the end of yet another diet. But really the reason we’re unhappy again is because we were never really happy in the first place. Most people think, “When I create my dream result then I will be happy” but that’s not true. We have to figure out happiness now to get the results we want.
What we offer is not a one size fits all diet plan, it is truly a program teaching a way of life where you understand your body from the inside out, you know how food works. You learn how to see your mind and know how your brain works. You get the support and data to help you make real shifts so that you can continue the positive patterns that you built for yourself for a very very long time. It is an invitation to go deeper.
You get to keep the results that you want. Or, if you decide to veer from them it is a choice. It is not a surprise. It is not unconscious. It’s a choice and you can always veer back whenever you want to. There are different phases in life, where maybe you were ill or had surgery, maybe you had a baby, or you are grieving or maybe you decided to start playing a new sport, there are many other reasons why we might change the way we eat over time. What matters is that you have a full understanding of how it works and to know that you have full autonomy over your body and that you have agency over what goes inside of it. You know what the results are that you are going to create and which actions will get you there, without having to believe that the answer is outside of you.
When you believe the answer is outside of you, that the diet plan is what is going to get you the result that you want, that is diet culture and that’s not what we’re about. We’re about helping you figure out how to trust yourself and trust your body so that you always have the answer at hand.
Working with a Registered Dietitian & Life Coach team, like Path Nutrition, can help you create your own path and get results.