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Have you gotten fat by sitting at home during the pandemic? No wonder. One of the few and easily accessible pleasures was eating. We ate while working remotely and comforted ourselves with our favorite dishes. Now, as part of a return to normalcy, one would like to lose those pandemic kilos. Just as?
- The approach in which we make everyone eat five meals a day, every three hours, will never work, because each person is an individual and has his own separate story – says the psychodietician Joanna Gerwel
- As he explains, a psycho-dietician will help us in losing weight more effectively than a dietitian. The first one – will arrange our diet and meal plan. The latter will adjust it to our daily rhythm, preferences and individual difficulties
- My patients are usually veterans of ready-made diets who think they will fail anyway. They have no motivation, no faith in their own effectiveness – he says
- The psychodietician also reveals several ways to lose weight – for those who cannot afford a paid consultation
- You can find more similar stories on the TvoiLokony home page
Let us reduce calories slowly, and our body will not feel the change, because when there is no shock, there is no veto – tells all overweight psychologist and psychodietician Joanna Gerwel, consultant in the field of psychology and psychodietetics in the Bariatric Complex in Ełk. – Let’s lose weight based on our own abilities, not standard dietary recommendations.
Monika Zieleniewska / Medonet: What exactly is psychodietetics?
Joanna Gerwel: It is a combination of two sciences – psychology and dietetics. Psychology as a science talks about the relationship between our psyche and behavior, it shows how the perception of ourselves and the environment influences our actions. By combining psychology with dietetics, we gain knowledge about the impact of the psyche on our diet.
A visit to a dietitian alone may not be enough to lose weight and maintain a lower weight?
A dietitian will tell us how to lose weight, but he does not mention the mental process of losing weight. It will perfectly present “what”, but will not say “how”. I would take a risk, but I would argue that removing all our eating habits over the years and replacing them with new ones is an unrealistic mission. In fact, it is a way to lose weight, but why after the end of the diet we gain weight again so quickly, if we make it at all …
Exactly why?
Because no one takes into account how much sacrifice one has to make to get rid of the usual rituals.
How often does it happen that we pick up the children from school or go for a walk with the dog at the time when our diet sets our meals. And now we are to change overnight. Someone who hates tuna has to start eating it, because only this fish has the appropriate caloric value. Imagine how many changes are made in two weeks and how tiresome it is.
No wonder that we often prefer to let go of the goal of losing weight and return to our comfortable old habits, despite the fact that they caused weight gain. Man is a born hedonist, therefore the most important thing for him is not how he looks, but how he feels. If we have a cool body and inner peace to choose from, the latter will always win.
So what matters is the psychological comfort …
I will give an example of a woman who goes to a wedding and buys shoes with very high heels the day before. She looks gorgeous and wears them to a wedding, although she feels that they are not the most comfortable. The longer the party lasts, the harder it is to walk. Eventually, the feet start to hurt so much that the woman stops thinking about how she looks and starts figuring out how to get rid of the high heels. If he is strong-willed, he will survive until the end of the day. However, the effect is always the same – she takes off her high heels and goes back to her old worn-out shoes. Comfort wins.
How will psychodietetics ensure carefree weight loss?
At first, the change may be slightly uncomfortable, but in the long run, it cannot hurt at all, because it will not last, like the aforementioned pins. If it hurts, you have to give it up and look for other shoes, or a different habit. An approach in which we tell everyone who flies to eat five meals a day every three hours will never work, because each person is an individual and has his own history.
Let’s take a sport. There are so many disciplines, although they have one goal. Everyone cultivates something different, at different hours, with a different intensity, putting in a different effort. It is said that with cardio training, it takes 30 minutes for it to start burning, but a person weighing 120 kg will not be able to endure 10 minutes of cardio. What if someone suggests such training three times a week? He will close himself with the belief that he is a failure and will postpone weight loss for another year. If the patient does not believe that he will be able to change something, he will not try. I say: it’s not the result that counts, it’s the process. You exercise twice a week for five minutes, that’s already XNUMX minutes a week! If we set a task and carry it out, our psyche records: I succeeded, I can go further.
My patients are usually veterans of ready-made diets who think they will fail anyway. They have no motivation, no faith in their own effectiveness. They look at losing weight as a challenge of ascending Mount Everest. You have to show them that reaching individual bases at your own pace is already a huge feat.
Does it increase your motivation?
The role of a psychologist while changing eating habits is to inhibit patients’ rapid pursuit of their goals. Don’t change anything overnight, take your time. Give up sugar first, then butter, as long as you imagine you will endure for the rest of your life. Remember, when introducing a new diet or a new nutrition model and expecting lasting results, you must be convinced that they will fit you for the rest of your life. If so, the change will continue, otherwise it will be with these pins.
I understand that you are talking to patients about their psyche and not about the caloric content of food products?
In fact, the interview is not just about nutrition. Nutrition is a third of what I need to know. It is important what a person thinks about themselves, whether they are effective (when they decide something, they achieve it) or not, whether they have high self-discipline, self-control or not. I also establish nutritional errors. Many women regulate their emotions through food, eat stress, or reward themselves with food. Others have childhood habits, such as eating each portion to the end. If there are two potatoes left on the plate, their psyche cries that food must not be thrown away.
Patients are often unaware of the reasons for their excess weight, repeating information known from the media that, for example, they eat too much sweets, and in fact it is only two sweets a day. However, the entries in the meal diary show that they eat 12 slices of bread during this time. So sweets are not a problem, even though the message “sweets fatten” is flowing everywhere.
How many meetings with a psycho-dietician do you need to prepare for in order to achieve the effect?
The length of therapy depends on how deeply ingrained your habits are. Working with a girl who eats sweets out of boredom is different. A few meetings are enough for her to learn to kill boredom in a different way. And differently with someone who has bad habits since childhood. For example, with a person who had to eat everything to the end so that it would not be wasted. For her, the indicator of satisfying hunger is an empty plate, because she cannot recognize the signs of hunger and satiety. Working with her is a change of beliefs, which takes several or a dozen sessions and it is a normal psychological therapy. With deeply rooted habits, after all, remorse, blaming yourself, the belief that it is impossible to lose weight are at stake …
And you’re actually slimming these people down permanently?
During therapy, I show them that regardless of the situation, they are given the tools to change themselves. I also try to organize support meetings for a year after the last visit every month.
And when I meet my former patients on the street, I find out that their lives are great. Calories are not my success, because in the psycho-dietician you become aware of when you eat, why you eat, and finally how to eat the right way. The expression on the face is a success – initially resigned, scared, and at the end confident and calm.
If someone cannot afford a therapist, can he / she try psychodietetics on his own?
Sure! The cause of excess weight will help you find out the meal diary. For a week or two, we write down what we eat and what time we eat. It’s nice when we add what we feel, what we think. After a week, we have a picture of whether we eat too often or too rarely and what we eat too much. Then we choose one thing that is the problem. Remember: we change one thing at a time. We reduce the portion by a maximum of 5 – 10 percent. Never by half, because the psyche will react immediately, signaling that it wants more and is ready to fail. If we take 10 percent off the plate, the psyche will not notice the difference. After a week or two, we’ll get used to a smaller portion, and then we can take a few percent off again.
Learn more:
- Adele lost more than 40 kg on this diet! What is it about?
- Eight foods you must eat if you want to lose weight
- Half of Poles do not move at all, 70 percent. he doesn’t eat a single vegetable every day
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