Say Goodbye to Dieting – Tip#2 of 50 – How to Be a Curvy and Confident Woman at Any Size

admin — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 06:33:19 +0000

Are you a plus size woman struggling with excess weight, tired of feeling ashamed and hating your body, desperate to stop dieting, but don’t know how? I’ll bet, like me, you’ve convinced yourself that you can’t trust yourself around a fridge or pantry filled with fattening foods. Maybe you’re keeping the goodies you love at arm’s distance or heaven forbid, avoiding them completely. The problem with that strategy is that you always end up wanting what you think you can’t have and when push comes to shove, at some point your cravings will get you by the nose and you’ll end up binging on those foods that you tried so desperately to avoid. Don’t beat up on yourself. The problem has nothing to do with lack of will power or discipline. The real challenge is that as long as you think of certain foods as off limits or restricted, you’ll end up craving them like mad and eventually overeat them as soon as you can get your hands on them. And naturally that will only feed your frustration to feed, and you’ll end up gaining more weight and hating your body. It’s a vicious cycle that gets reinforced by dieting. In order to break the cycle, you have to say goodbye to deprivation and restriction and learn how to make peace with food, once and for all. No more dieting.

As a curvy, plus size woman myself, having a pair thighs I’ve long despised; I struggled for years with nasty body bashing “I hate my fat thighs” thoughts, and decades of food and weight obsession, trying desperately to diet or exercise away my thighs. But no matter how much weight I lost, I was never happy with my body or felt safe around food. I was able to maintain my weight off for nearly 6 years but it was a constant struggle that included overexercising, undereating and of course lots of binging.

Then in August of 2006, I threw caution to the wind and made the decision to stop dieting. That’s when I learned that as long as you continue to diet, and restrict your food, watch your weight, scale surf, body bash, avoid the foods you love, you’ll never have what you want-peace and self acceptance. That’s because dieting reinforces negative thinking that keeps us looking at things as black or white, good or bad, all or nothing. With a belief system geared for perfectionism, food is more like a danger zone filled with traps, zingers and mine fields everywhere you look.

Say Goodbye to Dieting: Self Acceptance Begins with Making Peace with Food

Now most weight loss experts are saying – “stop dieting.” Emotional eating, or eating to soothe your feelings is very common. This is because your cravings are actually unmet emotional needs that surface when you’re feeling overwhelmed. In fact emotional eating accounts for the near 98% failure rate of dieting. In April 2008, Traci Mann, Associate Professor of Psychology at UCLA shared the results of a composite study of 31 different long term studies analyzing people who lost weight on diets and opted to have their progress tracked by the study for between 2-5 years. As lead author of the study, she says, “We found that the majority of people regained the weight, plus more. Sustained weight loss was found only in a small minority of participants while complete weight regain was found in the majority. Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people.” When asked what alternative is best to consider in lieu of dieting, Mann said, “Eating in moderation is a good idea for everybody, and so is regular exercise.

Here are 6 quick tips to get you moving along the road to non dieting and self acceptance:

1. Toss out your diet books Get rid of all your old diet manuals, calorie charts and all diet related magazine articles promising a quick fix weight loss.

2. Throw out or put away your scale Begin to break the cycle of weight and food obsession by realizing that you are so much more than a number. Besides don’t let that old hunk of scrap metal tell you how you’re entitled to feel that day. That’s giving away your power.

3. Get support Surround yourself with a circle of supportive like minded women who are also on the road to non dieting and ending their weight and food obsession.

4. Plan a lovin’ the skin you’re in movie night Rent a film showing women who are comfortable in their bodies at any size. Some of my favorites are: Phat Girlz, Queen Sized, Real Women Have Curves, Hairspray, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

5. Focus on function Stop resenting your chunky legs, bulging midriff and untoned arms. Be thankful for what it has given you the ability to do, not how it looks.

6. Learn how to become an intuitive eater Stop dieting. If you don’t love it, don’t eat it! Stop eating at the first sign of satisfaction.

Now that you’ve got all this new information under your belt, the next step is yours. What will you do? Are you ready to say goodbye to dieting?

Turtle Women Rising » Fattening Foods

Say Goodbye to Dieting – Tip#2 of 50 – How to Be a Curvy and Confident Woman at Any Size