5 Tips to Making Healthy Lifestyle Changes : So You Can Say Goodbye to The Yoyo Dieting For Good!

Lose the weight WITHOUT dieting, instead, by making healthy lifestyle changes.

How many times have you dieted to lose weight? Not really thinking about how your diet would look once you lost the weight? This is so common and reflects the short term goals of dieting (normally weight loss!).

Notice that every time you have done this, the old habits have eventually snuck back in alongside the weight?

In this post I am going to give you 5 tips to making healthy lifestyle changes so that you can say goodbye to the yoyo dieting for good!

1) Why your diets never worked

The usual goals behind dieting are mainly weight loss and dieting is mainly focused on these results. This can cause people to hyper focus on losing the weight (often) within a short period of time. This can often lead to more extreme or unsustainable measures to aid in the weight loss. More extreme measures lead to feelings of deprivation and the knowledge that it cannot be done in the long term.

Diets also do not often teach the importance of nutrition and taking care of your body FIRST and foremost; instead weight loss is the number one priority.

Tip 1 to Making Healthy Lifestyle Changes: Focus on Creating Lasting Changes and Nourishing Your Body

2) Why Your Diets Never Worked

Dieting typically consists of a complete dietary overhaul all at once, which does not support the notion of long-term changes. Often doing this will also cause you to feel deprived and go back to old habits.

Tip 2 to Making Healthy Lifestyle Changes: Start Small!

Start by adding in more wholefoods and slowly switching things out. This makes the process of making healthy lifestyle changes much more enjoyable and manageable. It is also honoring the time it takes for you and your body to adjust to a new way of eating. It gets rid of that quick fix focus of dieting.

3) Why your diets never worked

Diets often tell you to cut out certain foods (even food groups) or to limit them to certain amounts. When we label foods as off limits (or consciously restrict them) this causes us to crave/ want these foods more. It puts the food onto a pedestal and we often find that we will overeat this food in the future when we do eat it. So, this restrictive mindset towards certain foods feeds into or creates an unhealthy relationship with food.

This does not work long-term, because as soon as you go off of the "diet" once you lose the weight, you will go back to these foods.

Tip 3 to Making Healthy Lifestyle Changes: Don't Cut Foods Out or Label Them as Off Limits.

Instead of cutting out foods or labeling them as off limits you can focus on the foods you are bringing in and use this as a way to crowd out less nutritious foods. Focus in on nourishing your body and crowding out these less nutritious foods by adding in more wholefoods. This creates a health and wellness mindset towards the making healthy lifestyle changes rather than a restrictive weight loss focus.

Also, stop giving certain foods labels of “good” versus “bad”. When we do this is feeds into the idea that if we eat that food we are “bad” – continuing or creating a cycle of negative thinking towards ourselves and food. This does not promote a focus of nourishing yourself.

Tip 4 to Making Healthy Lifestyle Changes: Visualize Where You Want to be

Write your goals down, visualize where you want to be (not just in terms of your weight). How do you want to feel? What do you want to be able to do and enjoy? How do you want your relationship with food to be?

Having a clear idea of where you want to be can really help you start taking the steps that will take you closer to your big goals: not further away (which can happen when hyper focusing on weight loss).

Tip 5 to Making Healthy Lifestyle Changes: Have a Powerful WHY

Why is making healthy lifestyle changes important for you? What impact will it have on your life?

Both tip number 4 and number 5 are really important in moving away from dieting and towards making healthy lifestyle changes – they give you a drive and reason to take the time to truly nourish yourself on your journey.

In Closing:

Dieting pushes the idea that weight loss is the number priority when in reality it should not be: the number 1 priority should be nourishing your body and taking care of yourself – weight loss is a bonus of doing this.

Time to start creating some small changes in your life and making healthy lifestyle changes.

Remember to claim your free guide “3 steps to overcoming restrictive dieting and emotional eating” to get you started on your healing journey.

Click here to download it:

Why Calorie Counting For Weight Loss is Not the Best Option: What to do Instead
https://makaylacarpenter.com/calorie-counting-for-weight-loss/

3 steps to include more healthy foods without feeling like you are on a diet
https://makaylacarpenter.com/include-more-healthy-foods-without-feeling-like-you-are-on-a-diet/

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This is a safe space for you to meet others, engage and learn as you embark on your healing journey.