I’m sure you’ve been there, most of us who have ever dieted have. You’ve just spent the last 4 weeks (months/years – insert as appropriate) dieting and you’ve now reached your target weight. Somewhere in your brain a switch flicks and all that denying yourself chocolate, chips and crisps seems to have come to an end. At last you can eat freely and you can reward yourself for all of the effort you have put into that diet. The result? Within a few weeks you are back to where you were before you started dieting – only more fed up and disillusioned because you have failed, again, to lose weight.
It may be no surprise to you – diets don’t work. The vast majority of people who diet put the weight they have lost back on.
So what’s the answer? Start with a head first approach. If you get your head right then your body will eventually follow. It’s important to ask yourself some serious questions about your relationship with food and why you feel the need to overeat in the first place. A good therapist with experience in this area will be able to work with you to reveal the thoughts and feelings you have about food that may be out of your awareness. It could even be that you have decided, somewhere deep down, that being overweight protects you in some way from danger.
We make all sorts of decisions when we are small about the best way to look after ourselves and get our needs met. Sometimes those decisions can have a negative effect on our lives when we are adults. the important thing to remember though is that as adults we have the power to change those decisions. If you have made bad decisions around food its unlikely that a diet is going to work long term for you. Contact a good therapist and sort it out the “head way”.
