Everyone around you seems to think they are an expert when it comes to weight loss. ‘Just eat less, move more and the weight will fall off!’

But you’ve tried every other fad diet out there. And you’re not seeing the results.

Eating less won’t help you lose weight. In fact, you probably need to eat more. Let’s look at why.

Eating less is setting you up for failure

This might seem counter-intuitive – eating less should make you lose weight. But in most cases, dieting is setting you up to fail from the very beginning.

When you focus on eating less food, you’re focusing on what you can’t have. You can’t have chocolate or chips or cookies or ice-cream. So all you end up thinking about is those foods.

Eventually, you cave. And because you’ve been restricting, there’s a good chance that you’ll feel guilty about caving, and then give up altogether.

One diet does not fit all

Another common issue come across is the caloric intake. What is a caloric deficit for one person is caloric maintenance or even above maintenance for another person.

The diet industry’s solution to this problem? Put everyone on 1200 calorie diets.

But this is well below what the average person needs to be healthy and happy and meet their nutritional needs.

It’s far too low for most women who are more than 5 foot tall and don’t have a naturally petite build already. It’s even worse for men, as their higher muscle percentage gives them a naturally higher metabolism than women on average.

So what happens when you go on a 1200 calorie diet?

You follow it for a few days, or maybe even a few weeks. You feel hungry all the time, your energy level drops, and you might even feel dizzy or weak.

Eventually, your body will go into survival mode. Your body will alter the balance of hunger hormones so that you’re hungry all the time. You might feel colder, as calorie restriction can actually reduce your body temperature.

Then one day, you’ll eat more than 1200 calories. All of your hormones and brain chemicals reward you for finally eating a decent amount of food, and encourage you to eat high-fat, high-salt and high-sugar foods.

This is the rollercoaster of yo-yo dieting.

Your body needs nutrients to be happy and balanced

Another reason that restrictive fad diets do more damage in the long term? They can deprive you of nutrients your body needs to function.

If you restrict your food intake, you’re likely to under-consume many vital nutrients. For example, you need zinc, vitamin A, iodine and selenium for your thyroid to function optimally. If your thyroid isn’t functioning properly, your metabolism will slow down. So guess what? Your weight loss stalls.

If you’re not getting the nutrients you need to power your organs, your cells and your systems, your body isn’t going to focus on weight loss. It’s going to focus on conserving what it can and rationing the nutrients out as best it can.

So dieting can also make you deficient and sicker in the long run.

If you don’t do the deeper work, you may struggle to lose weight

Even if you do eat less, long-term weight loss is unlikely unless you address the mental aspect. This is why so many ‘diets’ fail – they focus on what you’re putting in your mouth without understanding why you’re putting it in your mouth!

Your ‘bad food habits’ are probably not the cause of your weight issues. They are a symptom of what the actual problem is. Instead of facing your stuff – your emotions and your thoughts – you choose to stuff your face.

You can lose weight if that’s truly what you want to do. But if you want to go about it the smart way, you want to look into the mindset of successful weight loss, rather than just cutting calories and restricting foods. Click here to book in a free chat to learn about how hypnosis can help you do this!