By Judy Davie
**”Can you please help? I seem to be a yoyo when it comes to losing weight. I lose it, then go back to my original weight and get all depressed about it. Each time I think, ‘This is it and I’ll never put it back on,’ but I always do. Any ideas?”
— Christel**
To lose weight and keep it off you have to change your attitude to food and exercise. The word “diet” is associated with a weight loss eating plan that is started one day and stopped as soon as the weight loss goal is achieved. It’s a word that most of us associate with negative feelings such as denial, restriction and sacrifice. Most people can’t wait for their diet to end as soon as it’s started. That’s the main problem.
The second problem is they see “the diet” as something far removed from their current eating habits. In other words what they eat day to day on the diet is very different to what they eat day to day when they’re not on a diet. Most good weight loss eating plans contain very healthy eating advice but there are some that eliminate whole food groups, or suggest eating the same thing for a week. These are restrictive, hard to stick to and quite simply horrible.
The only way you’ll manage long term weight loss is to assume healthy eating and exercise habits forever, and the only way to do that is to forget the idea of temporarily dieting and re-educate yourself with what to eat, why to eat it and most importantly how to make it taste great. It might mean investing some extra time in the kitchen, but you can’t achieve your goal unless you do.
I have two slightly older clients who were both over 100kg when I met them. They have since changed their eating habits completely, they love trying out new recipes and ingredients, enjoy what they eat, and look and feel great. Collectively they have lost around 25kg and that’s only by changing their eating habits and increasing their level of exercise. There’s no diet plan to follow, all they do is follow the guidelines to healthy eating.
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