I don’t think I need to tell you that dieting doesn’t work and that’s why you can’t seem to lose the weight you’d like to. I think we all have a good idea of what is being said in mainstream culture about losing weight and we are thoroughly confused by what we should and should not do. We are tired of the massive ups and downs and our clothes don’t fit anymore. We are told we can eat anything we want if we do these specific exercises that we will have to pay an expert thousands of dollars to obtain. In this article, I am going to nutshell what it takes in the U.S. (because our food standards as so low) to lose and maintain your weight.
I was a private chef and dietary advisor to celebrities in Hollywood for nearly fourteen years. I created healing diets for specific health conditions like cancer, Alzheimer’s, chronic yeast, and autoimmune diseases, and to keep actors trim and camera-ready without feeling like they were missing anything. I was the chef on staff who guided Michael Weatherly (NCIS & Bull) to a forty-pound weight loss to trim down to do a triathlon in two months. Sounds potentially unhealthy but he had a whole team assisting him in his training. My home-cooked food was his fuel.
Here are some popular beliefs around diets and my myth-busting experience.
Diets are difficult to implement, and they are not sustainable. I will tell you what is not sustainable; eating the standard American diet that is laden with chemicals, poisons, plastics, and sugars that will make us obese and sick if we keep eating like everyone else. You create one specific diet and those times you don’t follow it like vacations, holidays, or parties are the exception and not the rule.
This one diet should be tailored to your needs based on the feedback your body gives you when you eat different foods. This diet should be organic, not processed, fresh, and ideally prepared at home by you or a chef who can cook it for you. It should consist of meats, fish, vegetables, seeds, nuts, and healthy fats from whole food sources like avocados and coconut. If you are sensitive or allergic to a certain food, don’t eat it. Ever.
You should never use a scale because it will psychologically damage you. Please use a scale every day. It is a system of measurement and a way to track your progress and assess your needs. Scales are useful when you are a few pounds up from a weekend of indulgence. You can adjust your food plan and exercise so that you can come back down to a healthy weight easily and quickly. This happens when you eliminate the foods that cause inflammation and thus, weight gain. Think of it like this; inflammatory foods equal weight gain which leads to illness and pain.
If you keep within a regular 5-10 pound range, you will feel so much better. Also, when you track your weight, you will see what foods and drinks may be creating the most weight gain and thus, the most inflammation.
You can eat and drink whatever you want in moderation. This particular belief is 100% false. Every single person has sensitivities and intolerances to certain food items that will create inflammation in their bodies. You can be potentially sensitive to any food there is. Avocados may be awesome for you but horrible for the person sitting next to you. We each have our chemical makeup that includes so many factors like our emotional lives, our beliefs, our experiences, what drugs we took as children, our environment, and how much we move.
Your body is a feedback mechanism. It’s your laboratory. Start listening to what it has to tell you by being very aware of how you feel when you eat. If you’re always popping Tums and Pepto there are, without question, some major flaws in your diet. Assess it by taking a detailed food and symptom journal with the times of day and symptoms in your body then look at the patterns between the symptoms and the foods. It’s eye-opening.
Weight loss is something you do to get thin and look good. Let’s turn this one on its head. Stop thinking about weight loss and think about health gain. Weight gain is inflammation in your body, plain and simple. Inflammation is the foundation for disease and pain. Certain foods will help you reduce inflammation and others that will make you gain it. Focus your efforts on learning what you can feed yourself that is good for your body instead of what you can’t or shouldn’t eat.
Food is fuel that either heals you or hurts you. You can figure out what’s what by paying attention. Your body is your laboratory, and you only get one. Put on your lab coat and start running your experiments. Health gain has a bonus. Looking good and best of all, feeling great! But don’t make that the only benefit of weight loss. That is when we end up on fad diets and starve ourselves.
If you can’t lose weight, you need to take a pill or a shot. This is not necessary at all. People want to have a quick fix in this take-a-pill culture. Now there are so many products to help you stabilize your blood sugar that can potentially cause muscle wasting, diarrhoea, vomiting, weakened bones, and pancreatic cancer. Do you want to sign up for those?
The thing that regulates your blood sugar best is the food you eat, and you can monitor what food will work for you and what won’t. Then you can create a food plan that also works for you and your lifestyle. It may not be easy to do this at first but it will create long-term health gain with weight loss as a bonus.
I don’t have time to cook, shop, or plan. I realize that many of us have VERY busy schedules. If you have a family and a job, then you are likely very stressed with just getting food on the table. But so was my mom and we managed to have a home-cooked meal every night because we all learned to cook, we made batches so we would have leftovers, we all ate the same thing instead of making different things for each person, and we rotated the dinner responsibility throughout the week. We always had dinner together as well.
These days, food corporations have hypnotized us all into believing we don’t have time, yet we will binge-watch four episodes of our favourite show every night and scroll on our phones until bedtime but have no time for something as fundamental as cooking. When I taught cooking classes at Whole Foods Market in LA, I was routinely shocked at how many people needed to learn how to cut a mango or avocado or chop celery. Very basic kitchen skills were never learned and the art and soul of cooking our food is now in the rearview mirror and because of it, we are the sickest nation on Earth.
We can all learn to plan, shop and cook our food while watching TV and do it together as a family. It’s never too late to create new habits that bring us health and make us feel connected to our food and to each other. These actions can also keep us out of the doctor’s office by reducing inflammation and keeping us fit and trim.
If you cannot do all that I just mentioned, there are tons of people just out of culinary school who would love to do the work for you. You think you can’t afford it but you can pay these chefs a low hourly rate to shop and cook for you. It can take them five hours to cook enough food for five days. The long-term savings on health care will be astounding when you do the math.
Eating organic food and cooking your own is too expensive. Believe me when I say that food companies are very invested in this statement. Especially fast-food companies who are the very worst culprits in the demise of our health and well-being. This statement is false, and I go into detail in my book, Get Well Now; Healing Yourself with Food and The Power of The Mind about why this is entirely untrue.
The primary reason why this is a corporate food myth is that developing cancer, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, or heart disease (to name a few), and chronic inflammation is far more expensive in the long run than eating real, organic food. I used to lay in bed for weeks at a time with over a dozen illnesses, depression, and debilitating pain – in my twenties! When I learned that the foods I was eating were the biggest reason for that, I changed my diet. I felt like a different person within a week! You can too.
Remember I said that I would share with you what to eat to gain and maintain a healthy weight earlier in this article? I can sum it up with three words: Eat real food. See that as your main diet and other mainstream American foods as something you eat from time to time when you want to. Flip the script when it comes to food and dieting. Quite often it was re-written by an advertiser who wanted you to buy a product or a philosophy that rendered you helpless in the kitchen.
Holistic health expert, Dr. Meg Haworth helps wounded ACONs (Adult Children of Narcissists & toxic parents) to become healed ICONs (Independent, Confident, Original & Naturally YOU) in her ICONIC ME coaching program, The Toxic Parent Recovery Summit, online courses, diet and nutrition coaching, her YouTube Channel, and on faculty with The Shift Network. You can reach out to her at www.meghaworth.com
