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Why you should rethink your diet in the new year

WRAL contributor Crissy Fishbane shares why she won't be going on a diet this year.

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By
Crissy Fishbane
, WRAL contributor
RALEIGH, N.C. — All the diets and dieting advice out there are enough to make your head spin.

As a certified therapeutic exercise specialist and personal trainer, I’ve felt a lot of pressure to make my body fit a certain mold. Just like most Americans, each time January 1st rolls around, I often commit myself to following a strict diet plan.

In years past, I would meal prep, log my food, count calories and order my salad dressing on the side in an effort to control every factor I could.

Guess what? I lost weight!

Not really a surprise, right? It would feel great for a few weeks.

Until one day, I inevitably realized I wasn’t feeling so great anymore. I was obsessing over every calorie and thinking about food all day long. My energy was dragging and I was, to put it mildly, not being my nicest self towards my loved ones.

I slowly began to drop the so-called “good behaviors.” The meal prepping dwindled, the food log was lost under a pile of junk mail, and I didn’t just give up on ordering the dressing on the side, I gave up on ordering the whole dang salad. I regained all the weight I had lost, plus I picked up an extra five pounds along the way.

I suppose now would be a good time to note that this same pattern repeated itself multiple years in a row. So five extra pounds, eventually turned to 10…15….and then 20 extra pounds. My on-again off-again dieting turned into a steady weight gain, while simultaneously helping me develop an unhealthy relationship with food.

So now for 2022, I am committing to something very different. This year I am committing to NOT dieting. Sure, I aim to focus on healthy behaviors and incorporating positive new habits, but following a strict diet will decidedly not be on the agenda.

Here’s why you may want to consider rethinking that new year’s diet too.

WRAL contributor Crissy Fishbane shares why she won't be going on a diet this year

Diets Don’t Work Long Term

Traci Mann, PhD of the University of Minnesota Health and Eating Lab and author of “Secrets from the Eating Lab” has been studying dieting and eating habits for over 20 years.
According to an interview in the Washington Post, Dr. Mann states, “After you diet, so many biological changes happen in your body that it becomes practically impossible to keep the weight off. It's not about someone's self-control or strength of will.”

Mann asserts there are three major biological changes that happen in the body when on a diet: neurological, hormonal, and metabolic.

  • Neurologically, when you diet, your brain becomes more responsive to food and you are more likely to start noticing the food all around you, particularly those foods you have more than likely declared “off limits.” Food actually begins to look more appealing to you because it has an increased reward value.
  • Hormonally, when you lose body fat your hormones change. The hormones that help you feel full and satiated decrease and the hormones that make you feel hungry increase. This makes you more likely to feel hungry and it becomes harder to feel satiated from the same amount of food.
  • Metabolically your body slows down when dieting. Your body is an efficient machine. If you’re trying to lose weight and are consuming less calories, your body will find ways to run on fewer calories, meaning you will have more calories left over. It becomes a vicious cycle.

All of these changes conspire against you, making it nearly impossible for you to keep the weight off permanently.

Diets have Physical, Mental & Emotional Consequences

I asked Brit Guerin, MS, M.Ed, LCMHCA, a local therapist, personal trainer and owner of Current Wellness in downtown Raleigh what she thought of new year dieting trends and here’s what she had to say:
Diets can lead to numerous physical health consequences including loss of muscular strength, risk of osteoporosis, loss of coordination, fainting, slowed heart rate, dehydration/ electrolyte imbalance, and thinning hair to name just a few. Diets can also lead to mental health consequences, such as obsession with food, depression, low self-esteem, anxiety, and eating disorders.

Guerin encouraged a focus on health-promoting behaviors, like increasing movement throughout the day, eating fruits and vegetables, hydrating, and getting adequate sleep, rather than subjecting your body and mind to the dangers of diets.

I wondered what a dietitian would have to say about all this, so I sat down with Maggie Perkins, MS, RD, LDN of Tomata Nutrition Counseling to ask her opinion on the benefits of someone starting a diet in the new year.

Perkins said:

As a registered dietitian, I do not recommend that you start a diet this new year. Dieting for intentional weight loss can harm our relationship with food and our body. When someone diets they create a dieting cycle and they can feel stuck in going on and off diets. Diets don’t work. Restricting food can make us feel out of control with food later.
There are so many diets and food rules out there that eating can feel very stressful. This stress can actually impact our health more than the food that we eat. There are other ways we can improve the nutritional quality, overall health, and our body image and we do not need to diet for intentional weight loss.

A Final Note on Diet Culture

It’s important to also note the growing popularity of Intuitive Eating and the Health at Every Size movement. If you’re not familiar with these ideas, they are worth checking out. Particularly as a parent, these are topics you will likely encounter and need to navigate with your child.

So much of our desire to diet and lose weight has been perpetuated by diet culture and the beauty standards dictated to us by society. Why is a size 4 considered more attractive than a size 14? Who decided that? I certainly didn’t.

In the new year, I challenge you to consider pursuing health rather than weight loss, moving for fun rather than exercising to burn calories, and listening to and appreciating your body rather than depriving and punishing yourself to make your body fit a mold dictated by society’s unrealistic and consistently harder to achieve ideal body type.

Crissy Fishbane is the co-founder of HER Health Collective, a supportive community and resource hub for moms. She is a certified therapeutic exercise specialist, personal trainer, wellness coach, and former high-school psychology teacher. Crissy believes in a holistic approach to women’s health and is a strong advocate of improved screening and treatment of perinatal mood disorders. She is passionate about building a supportive community for moms where they can make genuine connections and build authentic relationships. Crissy is a regular Go Ask Mom contributor.

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