Diet Detox Top Tips

In the lead up to no diet day we are doing our bit to support women to ditch the diets, stop overeating and have a healthy relationship with food and their body. 

Start here by joining us on a weight-loss holiday. 

If you're amongst the growing number of women out there who are sick of yo-yoing between Cadbury's and cabbage, here are some ideas you might want to experiment with to start flushing that unhelpful  dieting mentality out of your system and eliminating those toxic behaviours which keep you stuck in the dieting rut. A sort of diet detox, if you like. 

You could even inspire other women and post the"I'm on a diet detox" button above on your blog, facebook page or website. Just save this image to your desktop and remember to link through to our site or this blogpost.

Diet Detox Top 3 Tips

Detox Tip 1: Drop the word "fattening" from your vocabulary

What does 'fattening' mean anyway? Food doesn't 'make us fat'. Overeating makes us fat. Bingeing, comfort eating, emotional eating, pigging out makes us fat. Eating food we are not hungry for instead of throwing it away makes us fat. Butter, cream, chocolate, pizza, crisps do not make us fat, not when we eat them when we are hungry and stop when we are satisfied.

Detox Tip 2: Review your reading options
 
Instead of buying magazines that showcase impossibly glamorous celebrities who have been air brushed to perfection and patronising 'drop a dress size' style eating plans which are depressing and have nothing new to offer, check out our 'further reading' list for inspiring books and read thought provoking and refreshing stuff about real bodies and being your own diet guru here and here.

Detox Tip 3: Practice being your own diet guru

Next time you sit down to eat, look at the different foods or ingredients on your plate and ask yourself this:

• Do you consider them healthy, unhealthy, fattening, good, bad forbidden, OK or are you unsure?
• Do you have any judgments about this food?
• What made you decide to eat this particular food or combination of food?
• How did you choose?
• What do you know about this food?
• What do you know about where it comes from?
• What do you know about how it is produced/ manufactured/grown?
• What do you know about its nutritional value?
• What do you know about how this food affects your health, if at all?
• Do you know all this for a fact? How?
• Where do you get your information?
• Do you have this food often, or occasionally?
• Do you like it?

When you’ve eaten it ask yourself:

• Did it taste good?
• Did I enjoy it?
• Am I satisfied?  Do I feel nourished?
• Would I like to eat it again?

You don’t have to have a full inquisition each time you eat, just become aware of the choices you make, how you make them and whether or not they work for you. Keep adding pieces of the puzzle so that you build a bigger and clearer picture. Let us know how you get on.