Have You Ever Fallen Into the One-Last-Diet Trap?

Have you ever fallen into the one-last-diet trap?

It looks something like this:

• I’ll just do this one last diet, lose the weight for good, and then I’ll deal with my food issues.

• Even though I always gain the weight back, I have a strong feeling that this diet will be different.

• I’ve sworn off dieting, but so many of my friends are raving about this new program, I think I’ll give it a try.

• I’m going to be really good this time so this will be the last diet I’ll ever need to do.

• Let me just lose some quick pounds so I can leave dieting behind and start focusing on dating and job hunting.

• This program isn't a diet; it's a lifestyle change, even though it requires cutting out a bunch of foods and weighing myself daily.

Ignores the Facts
While the desire to lose weight is completely understandable given our weight-stigmatizing culture and its obsession with unrealistic body standards and tendency to equate thinness with health and moral virtue, falling into the one-last-diet trap ignores the fact that diets don’t work for most people.

There is not one study that shows that any intentional weight loss program leads to long-term weight loss.

Instead, research has found that 95 percent of dieters eventually regain the weight they lost and up to two-thirds gain back more than they lost.

Different Diet, Same Results
Rebound weight gain is not due to a lack of willpower, poor self-discipline or following the wrong diet.

Your body isn’t wired for restriction. It’s wired for survival.

Regardless of what diet, lifestyle or wellness plan you're doing, when you deprive your body of food, it thinks it’s being subjected to a famine and will do everything it can to survive. This includes triggering numerous compensatory processes, such as hormonal changes that increase appetite and decrease metabolism.

Although it may not feel like it, your body is trying to protect you.

Be Informed, Be Honest
As I said, the desire to diet and lose weight is completely understandable.

However, I think it’s critical that before embarking on yet another diet, you are fully informed of ALL the potential outcomes—especially all the stuff the diet ads and success stories don’t warn you about.

I also think it’s important to be really honest with yourself when it comes to your own personal experience with dieting and other forms of food restriction.

Would you describe it as successful, even if you regained the weight?

How has it affected you physically, mentally, emotionally and socially?

How has it impacted your relationship with food and your body?

How much of your time, energy, headspace and money has it wasted?

Is it truly aligned with what you value the most in your life?

When you reflect on your dieting history, you'll likely see all the more clearly how futile and harmful dieting can be. This is such helpful information to remember the next time you're tempted to try one last diet. 

Dieting Won’t Bring You Peace
If you want a peaceful relationship with food and your body, it can’t be achieved through dieting. If anything, dieting will only exacerbate your challenges.

Rather than put all your energy toward depriving yourself for a short-term result with potentially negative side effects, what if you put it towards healing your relationship with food and your body so you can avoid the traps and get off the dieting roller coaster once and for all?

Do You Play Hide & Eat?

Have you ever played Hide & Eat?

Also known as sneak eating or secret eating, it looks something like this:

As soon as her co-workers leave the room, Kim snatches a handful of leftover cookies and quickly throws them into her bag. She declined them during the meeting secretly hoping there’d be leftovers she could eat alone at home.

Once everyone is asleep, Janice sneaks into the kitchen, quietly opens the freezer door and grabs a pint of ice cream, which she hurriedly eats while standing in the dark.

When Jack goes to the restroom, Jim stuffs the last slice of pizza into his mouth before the waiter comes to clear the table and his friend returns.

Val keeps a stash of chocolate bars hidden in the back of her sock drawer. She eats them in bed while watching TV, then buries the wrappers in the trashcan so her roommates won’t see them.

Perhaps, like me, you can you relate to these stories. During my dieting years, I mastered the game of Hide & Eat!

Why We Play Hide & Eat
There are many very valid reasons why you might play Hide & Eat. Following are just a few.

• You’ve internalized diet-culture messaging that assigns moral value to food and judges people as good or bad based on their food choices (i.e., if you eat something "bad," you're bad).

• You don’t want to tarnish your reputation as a “healthy person,” "clean eater” or “dedicated dieter.”

• You fear it’s unacceptable to eat certain foods (or eat at all) because of the size of your body, what you've already eaten, or your lack of exercise.

• You don’t want anyone to witness what you believe is a lack of willpower, discipline or self-control.

• You’re afraid of the external food police making comments about your food choices, like “Do you really think you should be eating that?” or “I thought you gave up sugar!”

• You love the thrill of rebelling against a restrictive diet or watchful partner or parent, yet don't want to suffer the consequences of getting caught.

• If no one sees you breaking your food rules or eating a forbidden food, it didn't happen or doesn't count.

• You’re experiencing an uncomfortable emotion, such as anxiety, sadness, loneliness, and long ago learned to hide your feelings, retreat from the world, and self-soothe with food.

Conditioned to Play
Although it can feel really shameful and embarrassing, your desire to play Hide & Eat is completely understandable.

Most likely, from a very young age, you’​​​​​​​ve been conditioned (like most of us) by our insidious, pervasive diet culture to believe that much of your value and worth is determined by your size, shape and what’s on our plate.

This deeply ingrained, shame-triggering social construct can easily compel you to hide any behavior that could potentially be considered bad and ultimately jeopardize people’s perception and acceptance of you.

The risk of being seen feels too great.

Not Your Fault
None of this is your fault. You’re simply trying to protect yourself from painful perceived threats, like judgment, criticism and rejection.

But, as you may know all too well, playing Hide & Eat is not a very fun game. It’s a fear-based, shame-driven activity that’s exhausting, demoralizing and disempowering.

Plus, it’s hard to enjoy whatever it is you’re eating when you’re anxiously consuming it at a fast and furious pace while crouched in a dark corner trying not to make any noise.

The good news is you can come out of hiding whenever you’re ready.

You Can Walk Away
Walking away from the game of Hide & Eat can take a lot of courage and self-compassion, especially if you’ve been playing it for a long time.

It’s best to take small steps, like setting boundaries with the Food Police in your life or experimenting with eating a forbidden food out in the open, perhaps with a supportive friend.

Disrupting the pattern of secret eating requires reassuring and proving to your scared self that it is safe to eat whatever and whenever you want and that your needs and desires are always valid.

Of course, if you are in a situation where you truly don't feel safe being seen eating, especially certain foods, by all means, eat in private. Doing so is self-protection and absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.

Seek Support
Untangling yourself from the grip of our toxic diet culture can be downright challenging.

I encourage you to seek support from a weight-neutral, anti-diet practitioner who can help you let go of the beliefs and behaviors (and games) that are no longer serving you. You deserve to eat and live freely.

Chocolate No Longer Calls to Me All Day Long; I Don't Even Think About It!

My clients are often surprised—if not shocked—to discover they have forgotten about a food that once felt like it had so much power over them.

It sounds something like this:

• I can’t believe I forgot about the cookies in my cupboard!

• My favorite chips went stale before I finished them. That’s a first!

• The chocolate in my pantry no longer calls for me all day long; I don’t even think about it!

• I can’t believe the bread went moldy. It’s never lasted long enough to do that before.

• I was so surprised to find a half-eaten candy bar in my bag that I bought a few weeks ago.
  

This doesn’t happen because my clients are just really forgetful people.

It happens because they started giving themselves unconditional permission to eat.

How Food Loses Its Power
Feeling obsessed with or controlled by food is not a sign of weakness or a lack of willpower and self-discipline. It’s a natural outcome of dieting and deprivation.

When you give yourself unconditional permission to eat what you want when you want (assuming you have access to it), food—especially your forbidden foods—loses its power.

The more you eat a forbidden food and trust that you can have it when you want it, the more its allure and charge wears off.

The food becomes neutral. It’s no longer a big deal.

You enjoy it when you want it and forget about it when you don’t.

Mels's Brownie Story
Here's how my client Mel describes her experience...

"In the past, if my partner made a pan of brownies, I wouldn't have been able to concentrate on work knowing they were on the counter. In fact, I'd sneak into the kitchen multiple times a day to shave a little off the row hoping no one would notice.

Now that I'm letting myself eat sweets whenever I want them and without telling myself I'm being bad or that I have to make up for it by going on a diet or working out more, I don't even think about the brownies until I'm ready to enjoy some dessert with my family.

The experience is so much more satisfying because I no longer feel obsessed, powerless and out of control."

It Will Never Work for Me
It’s completely understandable if you have doubts that this could ever be true for you, especially if you have a long history of dieting and a long list of forbidden foods, food rules and food fears.

My new clients look at me in disbelief when I share stories like these with them. They can’t imagine it for themselves.

Inevitably, as they make peace with food and trust nothing is off-limits, they are pleasantly surprised that they, too, no longer feel preoccupied with, distracted by or controlled by food.

My clients don’t have any magical powers.

What they do have is a deep desire to have a more liberating, satisfying and peaceful relationship with food. If they can achieve this, so can you.