New Years Resolutions and the Anti-Diet Diet.

Aaahhh – the approach of a New Year – the time when many of us, irritated with ourselves for not being where we thought we should be or wanted to be by the end of the old year, resolve to do better next time.  So we come up with another list of resolutions, probably the same as last time and also like then, ones we are not likely to fulfil. For a lot of women (and men) weight comes very high on that list and we promise all sorts of thing to ourselves in the drive to do better. We resolve to make all sorts of changes, often all at once, starting on 1 January every year. How has that been going for you so far?

After many years of doing just that, I ended up stepping off that bandwagon altogether. Last year I published a sort of anti-diet diet book. The Tortoise Diet Method (the word “diet” is crossed out on the cover of the book) is the book for those of you who never want to go on a diet again but still want to look fabulous and probably most important of all, stop the upward trend that the scales have been reporting back to you when you have been weighing yourself over the years.

You see – I finally figured out, after repeating the same behaviour over and over again, that New Years Resolution type behaviour, where we attempt to install a whole lot of new behaviours all at once, is doomed to failure. It reminded me of the Hare in the ancient fable by Aesop of the Tortoise and the Hare.  Clearly nothing much has changed in the intervening 2500 years or so since Aesop wrote his tale about human behaviour, as most of us still act like the Hare, hitting the race with a hiss and a roar (making all those changes all at once and promising to do so for the next year) but losing focus, getting distracted and finally, caught napping while someone else wins the race.

So after deciding to stop repeating what hadn’t worked, I thought about taking a good look at what did work. My focus turned towards the Tortoise in the story and I started to see the value of the slow and steady type of behaviour. 

Of course, most of us don’t like anything that sounds like it is going to take time to get a result. Our world these days is set up for instant change, instant gratification, the miracle diet that is going to solve all your weight issues preferably by last week. It takes a bit of a paradigm shift to stop that kind of thinking and really start to address what needs to be addressed, put into practice the sort of behaviours that need to be practised, and take effective steps over time to win whatever the race is for you that you haven’t been able to win up to now.

I’ve been a journaller for much of my adult life. It makes painful re-reading to go back over the years and see the oft-repeated goal for each New Year to lose a whole lot of kilos.  Quite frankly, I never managed to do that and in fact, each year, my weight instead got gradually higher and higher. I figured that although my weight went up and down, it was actually trending upwards. Once I came to my senses and got very real about what was actually going on, I realised that I could predict my future from that trend line. And the future wasn’t looking pretty.

If I kept going at the rate I was, then my weight would continue to go up.  The outcome of that was not just that I wouldn’t look great in the clothes I wanted to wear, but the health issues that start to occur along with unnecessary weight gain.  A bout of gout (I was nowhere near old enough to have that!), a blood-test that showed warning signs for my health, and the failure to once again reach the weight target I had in my head, led me to finally take a good look at the situation and start addressing it in a realistic way.

The first thing I did was to stop the dieting.  By that I mean, I stopped embarking on every new miracle diet that turned up promising incredible results in an incredibly short period of time. When I looked back over my life, I realised that I wasn’t even overweight when I started dieting in the first place and in fact, the act of dieting itself was one of the catalysts to a lifetime of weight gain.  I also realised that the times I was a steady appropriate weight, that I was eating quite normally and not consciously even thinking about food.   I was eating normal nutritious meals with nothing much in between, mainly because I was busy, involved in meaningful life and just focussing on  living rather than what I was going to put in my mouth next.

Which started me thinking about “what if’. What if I had never started dieting in the first place but just carried on eating the normal 3 nutritious meals a day that I had grown up with as part of family living on the farm.  I realised that the act of dieting itself, triggered a lot of disordered thinking, which led to disordered behaviour, which repeated over time, led to the lifetime of yoyo weight loss and gain that many of us experience as the reality of our lives.

And what if instead of aiming to lose too many pounds or kilos in too short a time, I lengthened out that time, lowered my expectations, and aimed to lose a realistic and achievable amount each month and kept that off?  In fact, what if I aimed to lose a kilo a month?

And what if I could stop obsessing about weight and the scales, stop weighing myself all the time and putting so much emotional weight (sorry about the pun) on that number the scales are reflecting back at me, and either stop weighing myself altogether, or weigh myself once a month?

I know a lot of you stopped reading at the ‘one Kilo a month” bit but I want you to stay with me for a minute. I know you may have a lot of weight to lose and sure, some of those miracle diets do work if you stick to them for a decent amount of time. But what happens when you stop the diet and go back to your normal life? What happens when the stressful troubled times come to disrupt your routine and trigger the overeating problem you may have in times of stress? What happens then? You put it all back on of course plus a bit more. Now you feel even worse about yourself and more susceptible to the false lifelines being thrown to you so you do the same thing again.  And each time ending a little heavier than the last.

I am saying, what about losing slowly and sensibly without dieting but giving your body the nutrition it needs, eating regular meals that are not too far from what is normal for you.  Then gradually increase the types of food that you are know are good for you at the particular stage of life you are in right now, so that eating well becomes a habit for you. That way you are more likely to stick to it and you are more likely to make deep effective changes over time.

That is the basis of the Tortoise Diet Method.  No dieting, but eating what your body needs and what you truly enjoy as part of a well-rounded life, focusing on living life, and allowing your weight to sort itself out naturally. For most of us there is a lot of healing that needs to take place to address the sort of old behaviour that led to weight gain in the first place, so you do need to allow yourself time to address the issues, time to put into practice the right thoughts and right behaviour and time to tweak your environment to support success. Which is why I advocate taking a whole year to establish a good foundation for the best sort of future for you – and which is why now, at the beginning of a new calendar year, it is a good time to be taking a look at a successful system such as the Tortoise Diet Method rather than throwing yourself full swing into the old way. That way has already shown it doesn’t work.

If you want to know more, you can buy the book from me on the link below, or you can buy it from Amazon. You are welcome to do either but of course I would prefer that you buy direct from me – that way I get to know you and you can choose to become part of a community to support you.   I can safely say that as this year comes to an end, my weight trajectory is trending downwards, and I still have more to go. Join me this New Year in taking effective action towards reaching your goals -whatever they are.