2024-01-30 06:58:41
Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) — Don’t blame yourself if you’re having difficulty sticking to the nutritional resolutions you made for the New Year.
This advice was provided by Oona Hanson, an educator and parenting support specialist, explaining that our minds and bodies are actively combatting the kinds of restrictive dietary rules that are strongly promoted during January.
“Psychology and nutrition experts have taught me that giving yourself the grace to completely let go of the diet mentality can be the best way to have a good time all year round,” Hanson said.
Dietary restrictions are counterproductive
We’ve known for decades that diets don’t work in the long term. The reason is good, according to Charlotte Markey, a professor of psychology at Rutgers University in America, as reducing food intake is “non-adaptive from an evolutionary perspective.”
Marky is the author of Body Image for Girls: Love Yourself and Grow Fearlessly and co-author of Being You: The Body Image Book for Boys.
In the same context, Shanna Minnie Spence, a registered dietitian who writes the newsletter for The Nutrition Tea, said that many people are unlikely to stick to a diet, not because of some personal failure, but simply “because we are human.”
Markey explained that when we put a lot of effort and focus into preventing ourselves from eating a certain food, our brains spend a lot of time thinking about it, which makes us more likely to crave it in particular. This common phenomenon in psychology is known as “ironic processing,” because the more we try to control the food we consume, the more it ends up controlling us.
Spence noted that the pressures surrounding January resolutions cause many people to set unrealistic goals from the start.
Diets make false promises
This feeling of guilt should not only affect those who give up on a diet, but also those who feel foolish for trying to diet.
The allure of January’s fresh start only adds to the tempting messages about reinvention and self-improvement. Markey pointed out that the belief in change, this confident drive, and the optimism we feel when we start making a decision, may lead us to “magical thinking.”
“As a society we tend to take an all-or-nothing approach,” Spence explained to CNN. He continued, “The New Year is the time of year designated for setting goals or making resolutions, so we want to change toward what we believe is for the better, and we want to do that immediately.”
Markey said that having compassion for ourselves can help us see how much we can accept that “the diet will never work.”
Improving nutrition without dieting
Just because you realize that diets are ineffective does not mean that you can never improve the type of food you consume. However, this requires that you be realistic. Markey pointed out that “there is nothing wrong with wanting to eat more fruits and vegetables,” pointing out that “how to deal with this is important so that this behavior becomes a habit, by making small and gradual changes.”
Spence recommended thinking about addition rather than subtraction when it comes to improving nutrition. She stressed that it is necessary to make these changes enjoyable and to do so in a diverse manner rather than minimizing them.
She said: “If your goal is to get more vegetables, this does not mean that you should only eat salads and not enjoy other foods. This means that you can think about how to add vegetables during the day, in smoothies or with eggs in the morning. And in sandwiches at lunch, To decorate pizza or in sauces.
Refusing diets has benefits
Dieting is a form of eating disorder, and may increase the risk of eating disorders and serious mental illness, which is on the rise. So adjusting to the all-or-nothing mentality surrounding diet may improve our nutrition and benefit us in deeper ways.
“Not only is dieting ineffective, but it is actually considered very negative in terms of mental and physical health,” Markey noted. “When you treat food as something to be avoided or even feared, we stop enjoying it, and that can have some really devastating consequences, not only on your eating habits, but on your mental health as well,” she explained.
This narrow approach to nutrition is flawed and counterproductive: “We should not feel guilty if we like certain foods. Because food is supposed to be enjoyable and taste good, in addition to providing nutrients.” Spence noted that the only foods you should avoid are “those you’re allergic to, those related to medical reasons, and those you don’t enjoy.”
Rejecting feelings of guilt and restrictions may have a positive impact on our relationships and society as well. The way we talk and act around food affects not only our well-being, but also the well-being of those around us, such as our children, friends or colleagues. “By countering all of these diet culture messages, we can help change norms,” Markey emphasized.
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