“This diet worked for me in the past…”

How many of us have heard those words from someone we know, or uttered them ourselves? 

“When I did keto, I lost a ton of weight, I just need to get back to it”.

“When I was drinking SlimFast shakes, I was so thin”. (there’s a throwback for some of us!)

“I just need to do intermittent fasting again and then this weight I regained will come off”.

“I counted WW points and found it was sustainable, so I just need to do that again”.

As we come up on the new year and time of resolutions, I think about all the times I’ve heard these statements from friends and family members, strangers on the internet, and even uttered them myself. Just read Part 1 and Part 2 of my own personal diet history (which, as I’ve typed this, realized I missed the intermittent fasting and SlimFast phases in all of the diets I’ve tried in the past). If you’ve ever found yourself making a similar statement, or even thinking about which diet you’re ready to try starting January 1, I want you think about these questions:

If it worked in the past, why did it stop working?

If it stopped working, did it really ever work?

You may say, well, I just got comfortable/life got busy/I just simply fell “off track” and that’s why it quit working.

But, our diet is not a short term journey - our diet is how we choose to eat every day. We have to eat to survive, and our food is here to nourish us, so why would we choose to eat in a manner that we can’t continue long term?

If you tried keto (barring a legitimate medical need for this diet), are you never going to eat a sandwich or piece of pizza (and don’t come at me with cauliflower crust pizza - it’s not pizza) or cookie EVER again? 

Are you really going to only eat within an 8, 12, 14 hour window every day? 

Are you going to carry around a shake to drink for breakfast and lunch every day?

No, you’re not going to do these things. Realistically, any short term “diet” is just not a sustainable solution to improving your health. Sure, you can lose weight, but there’s a reason that 80% of weight lost after trying a “diet” is regained within 5 years. It’s not a real solution to the issue of improving your nutrition and health.

We have to let go of diet culture - easier said than done, trust me, I know - and think about how we want to live the rest of our lives. How can we fuel our body so that it can keep us going? How can we treat our bodies well and maximize our health and longevity, while still enjoying ourselves? How do different foods make us feel physically and mentally? 

To me, these are the questions we need to ask ourselves before embarking on yet another “diet”, that is sure to be a short term fix to an issue we’re going to face for the rest of our lives. And it’s a long process. It’s not a quick fix, it doesn't always fit neatly into a New Year’s resolution. But it’s the path forward that will result in lasting change and get us to the point of no longer having to make a resolution around losing weight or trying to stick to another diet that is bound to fail. The weight loss industry in the US is a $160 BILLION industry; that’s an incredible incentive for people to develop and sell you short term solutions that will keep you coming back and spending money time and time again.

Ok, so how do we even get there? I think there are a few good places to start. 

One would be to just try and exercise common sense. We generally know what foods serve us well and improve our health and those that don’t. Making a conscious effort to pay attention to what we put in our body is a way to work on applying that common sense to our diet.

Another would be to find a way to move that feels good to you. I’ve always personally found that exercising makes me more likely to make good decisions when it comes to my diet, as one good action usually leads to another. Nevermind the mental and emotional benefits to exercising, in addition to the physical ones. Whether it’s yoga, pilates, weight training, running, walking, hiking, skiing, group fitness classes, rowing, or cycling, try different things and find something that feels good. I’m personally in my pilates era and can’t get enough of pilates classes at a nearby studio while I also work to build my running endurance back up.

You could try to eliminate ultra-processed foods for a period of time as a way to see how that makes your body feel. I wouldn’t do this as a short-term fix to lose weight quickly, but rather as a way to really pay attention to how eating whole foods makes you feel. Knowing that is what’s going to lead to lasting change and fueling your body for your health. As much as I want a pack of Oreos or a bag of Doritos sometimes, I know exactly how I’ll feel if I do that, and I gravitate back towards something that will make me feel good. Not to say that every once in a while, I just go for the Doritos anyway, but it’s few and far between, and getting fewer and farther as I continue to focus on my health.

Committing to try a new recipe every week is another good start. Feasting At Home is a great resource for seasonal, healthy recipes. Making a commitment to cook at least one meal each week is also a great way to reconnect with your food and how it’s prepared, as well as try new foods and expand your palette. It’s also a great family activity, couples activity, or even something you could do with your friends each week.

I would also say it’s helpful to get a physical or blood work done to check your clinical health markers. Know what your blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides, and blood sugar levels are and focus on improving those through your lifestyle, rather than focusing on the scale. When you think about your health rather than a number on the scale, it’s a lot easier to make better decisions when it comes to your nutrition, at least it is for me. The thought of having to go on medication or even have surgery for something well within my control does not excite me.

Finally, remember that eating for your health does not have to be miserable! In fact, it shouldn’t be at all. Find a local farmer’s market and try some new things. Talk to the farmers and google ways to prepare different vegetables and fruits. Fish tacos on corn tortillas with a slaw of whatever we could find at the market is one of my favorite dinners and does wonderful things for my health. Make healthy eating work for you, and find things you love. It really is a fun process if you commit to it, and increases the odds of long term success in properly fueling your body.

All this to say, as we move into the new year, I encourage you to focus not on that diet you did that worked several years ago, but instead to find ways to move that feel good and work on creating lasting change with your nutrition, one small step at a time. It’s not sexy - it doesn’t fit neatly into an article headline to “lose 20 pounds in a month!” - but trust me, future you will thank current you for thinking long term and focusing on your health rather than the scale.