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“Quitting smoking is easy,” Mark Twain joked, “I myself have done it many times.” With weight loss, things are about the same: who among us has not gone on a diet, has not lost weight … and then has not gained it again?
A month has passed since the 35-year-old Svetlana “sat on Dukan”, but, despite serious restrictions, she has not yet lost a single gram. The reason is disruptions: every week she goes to the store like in a dream and buys a box of her favorite profiteroles, and then eats them in one sitting: I pounce on him like a boa constrictor on a rabbit.
No, it’s not about willpower or lack of it at all, says Tracey Mann, Ph.D. in psychology at Stanford University, who has been researching eating behavior for more than 20 years: . We break off the diet not because we are lazy or weak-willed. It’s just that we are in a very difficult position: food during the diet looks even more tempting, you want to eat all the time, and the body has to make do with fewer calories. In general, everyone is against us!”
In one of the experiments, Tracey Mann invited “dieters” with experience and those who do not follow any diet, turned on an exciting movie for them and put plates of sandwiches and snacks on the table. It was found that in a situation where there is no time to think about food, those who are on a diet eat more than those who eat what they want without hesitation.
Diet is such a personal prison from which we will definitely want to break out.
“When the mind of the “dietist” is switched to something else, he unconsciously pounces on food, the psychologist comments. – Trying with all his might to resist the temptation, he brings himself to such a state when it costs nothing to break loose and start eating everything. With those who eat normally, this does not happen.
Draconian measures
Diets make food even more attractive, and us – literally obsessed with it. The first to come to this conclusion was Ansel Case, an American physiologist who in 1944 conducted a large-scale study in which pacifists who refused to fight in World War II, but sincerely wanted to help those who suffered from it, took part. Ansel Case kept the volunteers on a starvation ration for six months, in order to then test several ways out of the hunger strike on them: he planned to develop the optimal menu for the soldiers who returned from the battlefields and the starving civilian population.
The diet of volunteers was limited to 1570 kcal per day (note that the energy value of the menu of most modern diets does not exceed 1000 kcal per day). The subjects ate mainly bread, potatoes, cabbage and rutabaga. Within six months, they lost about a quarter of their weight and, as Case later noted, they were obsessed with food all this time.
“We couldn’t think of anything else,” wrote one of the participants in the experiment. Because there wasn’t enough food. And because it was impossible to eat what we are used to. All favorite foods were banned.
Thirst for freedom
In any diet, there are forbidden foods – things that cannot be eaten under any circumstances. In extreme cases – only occasionally and a little bit. And we all tend to have a negative attitude towards any restrictions – this is one of the properties of the psyche.
“Diet is such a personal prison from which we will definitely want to break out,” says clinical psychologist Svetlana Bronnikova. – And sooner or later, the “prisoner” will run away into the wild and begin to sweep away everything tasty, sweet and fatty that gets in his way. Both the rats in the experiments and humans were more likely to overeat after periods of restriction. That is, the more active dietary attempts, the more often you will find yourself in a situation where you cannot resist not to eat something, and are unable to stop when you start eating.
Candy and chips – away
There are several weight management strategies that can be a reasonable alternative to diets, says psychologist and eating behavior researcher Tracey Mann.
Create barriers to prevent you from eating “bad” food. If you put a bowl of sweets next to you on the table, then you will eat a lot of them. If you take it to the other end of the room, then eat about half as much. Distance is a big hurdle. After all, you have to take your mind off what you are doing and go through the whole room to get the candy.
Interestingly, even moving the vase to the edge of the table so that you have to reach for it, you will also eat less sweets. “The effectiveness of this strategy, I was convinced by the example of my family,” says Tracey Mann. “When we go to a Mexican restaurant, I move the basket of corn chips to the other end of the table so that my husband eats less.”
A matter of mood
The first dietary attempt is usually tolerated quite easily and often leads to a good result: in a week it is possible to lose 5 kg, and sometimes more. After a while, when the weight returns, it will seem to us that we know how to get rid of it – we must go on a diet again! But this time the results will be worse, it will be more difficult to endure the diet. It will be possible to lose weight, but at the cost of much more effort. This can go on for several cycles, until at some point we find that the usual diet no longer works, and we start looking for other ways to solve the problem.
Other diets, slimming teas, pills and treatments… Some may even go to extremes, such as inducing vomiting after eating, a practice one step away from an eating disorder.
We often eat dissatisfaction with ourselves, excitement, boredom, unvented anger.
“But in fact, we do not lose weight from diets, not from pills and not from training, but as a result of a whole range of measures and efforts,” says nutritionist, psychotherapist, doctor of medical sciences Mikhail Ginzburg. – The process of getting rid of extra pounds is influenced by muscle tone, and emotional mood, and determination. You can not sit on any diet at all, but just fall in love – and start losing weight imperceptibly for yourself.
Delight with every bite
Diets lower self-esteem by making us feel like losers. “I can’t go on even the lightest and ‘correct’ diet for more than five days,” says 40-year-old Tatiana. “I feel weak and worthless.” Many of us feel the same way, but is it right?
“If you were sick and were offered a drug that had a lot of side effects, including irritability, distraction, dizziness, feeling tired, and at the same time its effectiveness in the long term is only 5%, and in 95% everything will return to normal, you would you agree to accept it? – says clinical psychologist Yulia Lapina. But diets are such a medicine. Then why do we think that it is not our fault that it does not help?”
Diets temporarily change eating behavior, but do not eliminate the cause of fullness. How to get rid of it? “Learn to recognize hunger signals and effectively satisfy true emotional and social needs,” advises nutritionist Michelle May. – Watch how the children eat. They do not think about when to sit down at the table and what to put on the plate. They are guided only by their “I want – I don’t want”, “I like it – I don’t like it”. But adults, especially those with extensive dietary experience behind them, find it difficult to be guided by intuition.
“They are separated from their body. They use food to satisfy all other types of hunger — emotional, intellectual, even sexual,” says Mikhail Ginzburg.
We often eat dissatisfaction with ourselves, excitement, boredom, unexpressed anger, excessive anxiety. We eat to punish ourselves, to be outraged by the circumstances, to spite the one who monitors our nutrition. And if diets and other “food projects”, in fact, are ways of short-term weight loss, then harmony involves serious work on oneself. But there is no other way – you will have to re-learn to eat when you want, and what you want. Enjoy every bite and get up from the table feeling full. Get to know yourself better – and say goodbye to diets.
Is it a diet?
The creators of some nutrition systems claim that their programs are not diets at all. But you can’t fool us, can you?
Nutritionist Michelle May lists 10 signs that tell a plan, program, or “lifestyle change” is actually a diet, even if the authors claim otherwise.
1. The emphasis is on weight loss and volume reduction, not health benefits.
2. You will have to record everything you eat. Keep a food diary, weigh food, count calories, measure portions.
3. Products and dishes are divided into “good” and “bad”, there are “red” and “green” lists.
4. The authors of the program first say that you can eat whatever you like. But then they explain what exactly you should eat, when and how much.
5. You will have to eat meal replacements (drink smoothies, eat bars, nutritional supplements).
6. Some products are considered “superfoods”, more useful, enriched with vitamins and all sorts of usefulness, and thus become special and more desirable to consume.
7. There are “chit mil” – days when they arrange a “belly holiday”.
8. Certain rules are set – for example, “do not eat after 18:00” or “sit down at the table every 3 hours.”
9. Fitness becomes a punishment. Exercise is needed to “earn” food or “work off” sweet calories.
10. Following this program, you constantly think about food. And you feel guilty buying sweets or “breaking down” on fatty ones.