#251: Why Diets Are Never Sustainable and How to Figure Out What’s Right for You with Rachel Freiman

January 25, 2021 in Podcast 0

If You Want to Stop Dieting Unsuccessfully, You Should:

Stop restricting yourself and start viewing nutrition and exercise as a skill
Change your mindset and incorporate your favorite foods into your weight loss plan
Explore new exercises such as lifting weights to improve your metabolism
Create a personalized approach that works for you and your body

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Episode Summary

Health resolutions and diets often bring in a new year, but that is not the best way to improve how you feel. Changing your health outcome starts with what is on your fork, and all it takes is simple and actionable changes.

Nutrition and Fitness as a Skill

Rachel Freiman is the CEO of MindStrong Fitness and is passionate about teaching others the skills necessary to ditch diets forever and embrace nutrition and fitness. Rachel is an educator at heart and focuses on both the mental and physical sides to building healthy and sustainable habits.

Why You Need to Break Up with Dieting

The truth is, diets are not sustainable. The belief that we haven’t lost weight because we haven’t found the ‘right’ diet stems from companies trying to sell you things. Rachel believes that the key to long-term health is education and developing the skills to focus less on restriction and more on what makes you feel good.

Changing your mindset and healing your relationship with food will help you realize that the problem isn’t you; it is the methods you have been using. Getting out of the ‘all in or all out’ mindset and instead focusing on the pleasure principle will give you the momentum you need to stop playing into the one size fits all diet industry.

Figuring Out Your Personal Macroplan

If you want to change your health, you need a personalized approach that is going to work for you and your body. Even if you have the strongest willpower in the world, telling yourself ‘no’ to foods you enjoy will not last.

Labeling foods as good or bad, or working out in ways that don’t actually provide the results you are searching for, is doing nothing for your physical or mental health. By approaching nutrition and exercise as a skill, you can develop habits that will serve you much better in the long run.

Are you ready to throw out your health resolutions for 2021? Share how you are supporting your body in a way that serves you in the comments section of the episode page.

Quotes

“For me, the pinpoint defining moment was the feedback I was hearing. Because it had nothing to do with what their bodies looked like. I heard things like, ‘I am showing up as a better teacher for my students,’ ‘I am showing up as a better spouse, partner, and parent,’ because of the way they felt about themselves.” (9:23)

“The key to this, the way that we truly make it a sustainable lifestyle, not just another fad diet, it by learning to approach nutrition as a skill. As a way where no food is labeled good or bad, where you can still have those sexy brownies as part of your weight loss plan. It’s not a cheat food, it’s not a binge food, it’s not a weekend-only food, it fits into your weightloss plan.” (13:10)

“This is not something that is wrong with us, this is something that is wrong with the industry. There are not enough people educating so that you have the skills to do this for life.” (18:38)

“It’s these baby steps that build momentum, and that momentum is what leads to habit.” (23:40)

“The reason that we struggle with weight loss is not because we haven’t tricked our body enough. Its because we haven’t learned to fuel it in the right proportions.” (27:47)

In This Episode

Why diets will never be sustainable for any of us (10:40)
The role of mindset when healing your relationship with food and nutrition (15:25)
What to do if you are working out super hard but the scale isn’t moving (21:52)
How to train your metabolism to speed up through nutrition and weight training (25:06)
Breaking down the demonization of carbs and why it is misplaced (26:30)