Are You Afraid to Stop Dieting?

For many dieters, it’s their worst fear: once they decide to stop dieting, they’ll completely lose control over their eating habits and gain all their weight back.

In a lot of cases, there’s no middle ground in the minds of these individuals—their options, they believe, are either that they remain dieting or spin out of control.

This black-and-white thinking often occurs because there has been no middle ground in their past behaviors. They’ve either been “on a diet,” following rigid rules and attempting to lose weight, or they’ve been “off a diet,” in a period of unrestricted gluttony and weight gain.

When this happens, we refer to it as yo-yo dieting or weight cycling—the pattern of losing weight, regaining it, and then dieting again.

Understandably, if you experienced this pattern, it would be easy to develop a fear of stopping dieting.

In the words of a Food Body Self community member:

“I did have this fear. I was afraid if I wasn’t accounting for the calories that I consumed that I wouldn’t be able to trust myself and would gain all the weight back that I worked hard to lose. I believed if I wasn’t in a deficit for the rest of my life, I would lose control. I believed just putting on a few extra pounds would make me unhappy.”

For the nine individuals I spoke to, their fears around stopping dieting boiled down to two core issues:

Fear of losing control
Fear of gaining (back) weight

Another member of our community said:

“Loss of control is definitely a fear. I’ve been heavier and then lost weight by doing a diet that counted macros. There’s a fear of letting go and getting back to my previous weight, which I was unhappy with.”

The solution each of these individuals engaged in was chronic dieting.

Chronic dieting is the practice of following diets for long periods of time. Oftentimes, chronic dieting includes adhering to fad diets, and experimenting with a variety of eating plans when none of the previous ones have worked, a practice referred to as diet hopping.

If you’ve been trying to lose weight for a long time, and you feel like you’ve tried every diet under the sun but still haven’t gotten the results you’ve been looking for, I’m willing to bet that you feel like you simply CAN’T stop dieting until you finally get this weight off.

And if that’s the case…

Whichever phrase we use—chronic dieting, yo-yo dieting, weight cycling, diet hopping—if you can’t let go of the idea of dieting, food has likely become something that feels like it’s interfering with your life rather than enhancing it.

Symptoms of Disordered Eating

Here are some ways your eating behaviors connected to dieting could be detracting from your life:

Obsession with weight control
Villainizing foods (characterizing foods as “bad” or “off limits”)
Skipping meals (or similar behaviors) to restrict calories
Fears and anxieties around food
Feeling out of control around food
Compensatory behaviors, such as “making up” for a binge by restricting, purging, or over-exercising
Worries about body image
Orthorexia (an obsessive preoccupation with the “cleanliness”, “healthiness,” or “purity” of food)

These are all symptoms of disordered eating and an unhealthy relationship with food.

Additionally, dieting can also be a trigger for overeating episodes: emotional eating/stress eating/boredom eating or binge eating, which can then magnify the desire to diet in order to “undo the damage done,” creating a vicious cycle of food restriction and overeating.

What’s the Problem?

And while you might believe that it’s your body—or more specifically, your weight—that’s the problem, I would argue that your relationship with food and your body image are creating more emotional distress than your body itself.

Here’s why:

Your body is a neutral object. There is nothing inherently good or bad about it. And the way your body looks doesn’t make you feel a certain way. However, when you have thoughts about your body, filtered through the lens of your cultural conditioning, those thoughts may be positively or negatively charged.

Thus, your body is not the problem.

Your thoughts—and the resulting feelings you have—about your food, your body, and yourself, are the true underlying problems.

Which is why it’s so important to address your body image if you want to heal your relationship with food.

But we still have one other problem to address—the fear of a loss of control.

As a former binge eater, I know exactly what it feels like to be out of control around food. I know how distressing it is to tell yourself you won’t crack again, and then to find yourself eating the exact things you promised yourself you wouldn’t. I know how shameful it feels to not be able to stop eating, or to eat yourself sick.

And having healed my relationship with food and regained full control over my eating habits, as well as taught many others how to do the same, I also know that it’s possible to be in control of your eating without being in a calorie deficit or following rigid diet rules.

Many people mistakenly believe their problems with food are a result of a lack of willpower, just as I once did.

When you believe you lack willpower, and believe that the reason you can’t stop overeating is because you’re “weak,” it’s easy to fall into the arms of the next diet program, thinking its rules will give you the structure and the discipline you need to keep your behavior and your weight in check.

But your willpower is not the problem.

The real problem is your relationship with food.

For the majority of the students I work with in my Food Body Self® program, the three most common issues they face are:

Emotional or stress eating,
A lack of awareness around hunger and fullness signals, and
Chronic food restriction (which is a trigger for overeating)

If you use food to self-soothe when you experience stressful emotions, how could diet rules possibly be an effective solution?

And if you find yourself eating for non-hunger reasons, or if you’re unaware (or overriding) your hunger or fullness signals, dieting is most likely exacerbating your food issues and debilitating your ability to feel confident around food.

What’s the Solution?

Now that you can see another diet would just be a band-aid solution…

Let’s assume that you’re ready to tackle your relationship with food head on. You want to learn how to gain and consistently maintain flexible, balanced eating habits so you can stop wasting your time and energy fighting with yourself and find peace, ease, and freedom in your relationship with food.

We’ll want to turn our attention to three main areas:

Your Thoughts

For example, if you can’t stand your body, we’ll want to work on developing body acceptance, respect, and neutrality. If you view food as “good” or “bad,” we’ll want to reframe your black-and-white thoughts. And if you have a lot of self-critical thoughts, we’ll want to cultivate self-compassion.

Your Feelings

For example, if you’re an emotional eater, we’ll want to develop healthy coping mechanisms as alternatives to self-soothing with food. If you experience anxiety around food, we’ll want to address those anxious feelings. And if you feel guilt, shame, or inadequacy for your appearance or behaviors, we would learn how to process those emotions as well.

Your Behaviors

For example, if you’re accustomed to relying on external signals to tell you when and how much to eat, we’ll want to practice noticing and following your hunger and fullness cues. If you tend to eat mindlessly, quickly, or for non-hunger reasons, we would practice eating mindfully. And if you struggle to enjoy exercise or do so consistently, we would incorporate joyful movement.

Of course, these are only a few examples of the many different approaches to start exploring the sources of your discontent with your body and your relationship with food.

How Can You Get Started?

I consider the trio of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to be one of the three triangles in my triforce.

Inside my Food Body Self program, we examine your relationships with your food, your body (body image), and yourself (self-worth) via your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

And we use three different solutions to heal your relationships with your food, body, and self. I won’t reveal this final triune here, but you can check out my free workshop to find out:

3 Solutions to Gain Control Over Your Eating—Without Relying On Willpower

Inside this workshop you’ll learn:

The foundation of ALL behavior change—without possessing this skill, you’ll NEVER gain control over food, much less understand why you eat as you do
How to build your emotional intelligence with one simple strategy—using this tool will help you release YEARS of food-related suffering
How to deliberately and consciously change your beliefs—your MINDSET sets the stage for your results (or lack thereof), and I’ll show you how to rewire your thoughts so you get more of what you want

When you understand why undereating and overeating occur, and the most effective, evidence-based methods to stop these patterns, you’ll see that a normal, healthy relationship with food is possible.

You CAN find balance, feel good in your body, and have plenty of mental bandwidth to refocus on what’s meaningful to you.

And you CAN learn how to stop dieting without losing control over your weight or your eating habits.

Click below to register for my free masterclass and learn the foundations of radical, permanent behavior change, along with evidence-based tools to make it happen! ⬇️