My dieting history - a personal story.

As you can see, my book shelf is like a graveyard of all my old diets. My bookshelf bears the weight of my expectations of all the diets I have tried in the hope of shrinking myself and finally, becoming happy.

I was a marketeers dream, I would buy into anything that promised fast change, regardless of the methods. I was drawn in by images of beautiful, slim women living their best life. What I’ve learnt is that the diet industry never tells us the side effects of their diets - what it takes to live that effortless lifestyle that I craved.

In their own way, all diets create a calorie deficit, taking in less calories than your body needs - if you manage this for a long period of time, you’ll lose weight. It’s not complicated or revolutionary - the diet industry want us to think that so they can sell us their plans or lifestyles. 95% of diets fail, often leaving us heavier than we were before, not only physically but also mentally weighed down with disappointment that we have failed yet again.

Let me make this clear…DIETS ARE MEANT TO FAIL. The diet industry wouldn’t be worth $72 billion a year if we all set out to lose weight and succeeded. Of course, there will always be the few who do succeed, they are presented as the rule - they are used to sell the diet to the rest of us. In fact, they are the exception.

Whether we succeed on a diet is purely put down to our willpower, our ability to resist a slice of cake or get ourselves to that spin class. Yes, of course the more we stick within the confines of a plan, the better the results will be. But it is hard to stick to a diet that often restricts our food intake dramatically all while increasing our activity levels. Our bodies will often be crying out for food, for calories, for nutrients in order to fuel our bodies’ processes. I’ve often thought I was addicted to food when in fact, diets have made me obsessed with food - mostly because I was never eating enough.

My dieting journey probably started long before I realised - ever since I can remember I used to go to Weight Watchers meetings with my Mum. I used to sit alongside these women as a child and take in all the diet talk, the negative self-talk and general body shame. My Mum was always perfect in mind, but she was always tracking her food and body checking, it was just part of being a woman. When I ended up bigger than her in my teen years it created a sense that I should be doing something about my body to make it smaller.

When I was around 16/17, I started basically starving myself in order to lose weight - I recently found a diary from that time, it was mostly overly dramatic teenage musings about boys but that idea was there, I must be smaller so I can be happy. The back pages were covered in magazine clippings of size zero models with the words ‘thighs, calves’ scrawled next to them. My dieting has never been as extreme since but this initial dive into dieting left me with a lot of unhealthy ideas that I have only recently started to unpick.

I went on to join Weight Watchers, following in my Mum’s footsteps. I went back and forth for years - I remember the first time I joined I put on a pound in my second week and never went back to that meeting as I was ashamed. Every time I went back I would lose a bit then give up, I got bored with all the tracking and found the meetings dull. I noticed it was all the same women every week, there for camaraderie more than the diet tips.

Clean Eating came around about the same time as juicing and the sugar free revolution. All of these diets were fronted by glamorous women selling this healthy living dream - they weren’t diets, they were lifestyles. But let’s be honest - they are diets. Anything that requires you to cut out food groups, only drinking juices or solely eating vegetables is a diet. Again, I was left always craving what I couldn’t have, believing the some foods were ‘bad’ and obsessing with health.

At no point during this quest for health had I ever committed to exercise - it was always the last thing on my mind. It was only when I found weight training was I ever able to actually lose weight. I (of course) paired this new love for exercise with a new diet…keto. This low carb diet is the only diet I was ever able to commit to, mainly because I was able to eat all my favourite foods - bacon, eggs and cheese, as much as i wanted.

I thought it was the best thing ever - I believed all the spiel about eating fat = burning fat, but I genuinely became scared of eating carbs. As I outlined earlier it only worked because it created a calorie deficit. To the outside world, I was succeeding but actually my world had become smaller. I was scared of going out for meals, I became that annoying friend who spends hours looking at nutritional information, I felt greasy most of the time and my body just wasn’t working properly. I had lost 4 stone but never actually felt healthy.

I graduated from keto to calorie and macro counting using an app - I felt that I would be healthier if I stopped cutting out whole food groups. I was right to think that but again, calorie and macro counting gave me another thing to obsess about. Instead of focusing on what food made me feel nourished, full and satisfied, I focussed on what the app thought I should eat. I knew that a lifetime of diets hadn’t left me any happier with the way I looked and I was more confused than ever about how best to look after myself both physically and mentally.

Lockdown in the UK gave me the opportunity to really think about my eating habits, I found the time to really look at my options moving forwards. I knew that I could no longer follow the next diet and I didn’t feel right recommending them to my clients either.

The intuitive eating approach doesn’t promise weight loss, in fact weight gain often happens once you commit to not dieting anymore. The goal of healing our relationship with food comes with a trade off, I decided that if I were to be able to break my bond with dieting it was worth it. 4 months in, I’m starting to learn to eat without judgement but also to incorporate gentle nutrition. I try to think about whether a meal has satisfied me. If not, what could be added to make it more filling? In 4 months I have dismantled a lot of the ideals I used to hold so close, there is still a long way to go, but I know I’m on the right path.

I use my chequered past with diets to help my clients - I understand, I’ve been there, I’ve failed more times than I can remember - moving forwards I’m going to apply the principles of intuitive eating as best I can to help others to heal their relationship with their bodies and food.

As women, we are hurt by the diet industry more than anyone else. I want to create a space where we can be ourselves, enjoy exercise, eat to satisfy and nourish ourselves, learn body acceptance and build our self-esteem. Giving up on the diet industry doesn’t mean giving up on ourselves, in fact it often means the opposite - you are trusting yourself and your body. You are putting your faith in yourself and your choices.

If your diet plan or ‘lifestyle choice’ doesn’t allow space for you to be yourself then don’t bother with it, an overly restrictive plan is so hard to stick to in the long term, will rarely yield the results we crave and often leave us with unhealthy habits that take a long time to break.