Self Help Recovery Tools
It is common for bulimics to diet or restrict food, especially between binges. After years of this behavior many people actually forget they are often dieting or restricting food
Dieting can lead to binge behavior, it is therefore important to look at dieting more closely and find out the ‘truth about diets’. Dieting leads to deprivation and puts your body into starvation mode. The combination of starvation and deprivation is toxic to human nature. Your body’s natural instincts will always win the battle to eat.
A diet is when you attempt to take external control over when, what and how much food you consume. Dieting has become so ingrained in our western society that it seems to have become a national pastime.
If people were told the dangers of dieting and how going on a diet will lead to failure, weight gain, depression, low self esteem, or put them at high risks of becoming bulimic or anorexic many would probably not bother wasting their time money and energy doing one.
It is estimated that Americans spend approximately $40 billion dollars a year on dieting and on diet produce. Researchers have also found that approximately half of American women are on a diet at any point in time.
Dieting has become a dangerous national pastime; many people are trying to slim down to unrealistic sizes. People who try to mold themselves into a particular shape different from their own will find they have real problems maintaining that size and will be at continual war with their own body.
91% of college students have dieted,
40-60% of high school girls are on diets and
46% of 9-11 year olds are on diets.
Everywhere we look we are bombarded by diets and their false claims for weight loss.
The truth about diets is..
Scientific research shows that more than 95% of people who go on a diet to lose weight will fail. If any weight loss was documented in this attempt it soon returned.
Research has found half of those who have dieted weigh 11 pounds more than they weighed to start with after regaining their lost diet weight. Revealing that the dieters would be in better shape had they not bothered attempting the diet
There is growing evidence that dieters get locked in a losing battle with their own bodies because their body is fighting like mad to resist the starvation process.
People do not realize that by going on a diet forces your body to go into starvation mode. When we are in starvation mode 'food' becomes the main objective in our life.
Studies show that when you are starving you can start to obsess about food. This is your survival instincts coming into full force to get you to seek food. This force is so powerful it pushes all other thoughts to the back of your mind and makes food your main focus and goal. It will keep in doing this until it gets what it needs for survival 'food'.
When all the dieters in the world fail they blame 'willpower' because they believe their willpower was not strong enough this time to stick with the diet.
By going on a diet your body will go into starvation mode. Your brain will start to think about food all the time and you may start obsessing about food. This is your survival instinct taking over to make you seek food.
Willpower will never be strong enough to help keep you on your diet, this is because its a lot weaker than your natural instinct to eat (a force that is designed to win) and also because willpower is not designed for long term use.
Willpower is good for training for marathons, revising for exams or learning a language, it gives you the staying power. It is not designed for long term use, it eventually needs a break.
Therefore no matter how much you try to fight this instinct you will always fail. It becomes physically impossible to use willpower to stick to a long tern eating plan. This is where the term Yo Yo dieting comes in, meaning you are caught in a vicious cycle of losing and gaining weight.