Don't Diet in 2019 - Reason #23: Diets are a two-legged stool
Diet and exercise aren’t everything.
I can’t count how many times I’ve heard this: “I’m doing everything right on my diet, but I don’t feel any better and the weight isn’t coming off!”
We can talk about diet and exercise until we’re blue in the face! We already know that we need to eat healthy and exercise to be healthy. Duh! But the typical diet addresses only food and exercise – and most of them do a damn poor job of that!
There are four other huge factors that greatly affect your body’s health and ability to lose fat: stress, sleep, hormonal health, and exposure to toxins. If your diet isn’t helping you address these other “legs” of the stool, you’re going to fall over!
What’s worse? Extreme diets may actually increase stress, decrease sleep quality, and leave your hormones completely muddled. This is why women on a diet are often exhausted but can’t sleep, experience brain fog, start to lose their hair, feel intense cravings and hunger, become irritable, have no sex drive, and sometimes even become infertile.
What you should do instead…
Anti-Diet Wisdom: There are so many NON-FOOD and NON-EXERCISE ways to improve your health! Bonus: most of them are simple and painless to do…so much easier than choking down kale smoothies every day! Here are three suggestions to get you started:
Reduce “obesogens” in your home environment! Obesogens are chemicals we come into contact with every day that are known hormone disruptors and may cause long term weight gain! I wrote a blog post about this for my Intuitive Eating group and I felt the information was so important that I should share it with everyone in my tribe — and the world if possible! You NEED to read this article about simple ways to “detox” your home of obesogens.
Reduce stress! Do you have 15 minutes? Lock yourself in a bathroom or a closet and use one of the many free guided meditations on YouTube. One of my favorites is this one by Deepak Chopra.
Get better sleep! Do your kids have a bedtime routine? You should too! Turn off screens a half hour before bed, keep your bedroom dark and cool, and try to hit the sack at the same time every night. In the morning, try to get at least 10 minutes of natural light (take a walk outside) to help regulate your circadian rhythms. For more great tips on sleep, check out this blog post I wrote way back in 2017!
Blog Author: Kelly Bailey, IIN certified holistic nutrition coach, and NPTI certified personal trainer
Learn more about the author here.