The Myth Of Dieting Willpower
When it comes to food, do you feel like you lack willpower? Do you wonder why you feel like you have little to no control when it comes to eating?
We’ve all heard it, felt it, seen it, thought it - if you can’t follow a diet, you lack willpower.
I remember the first time that I heard that this concept of lacking willpower around food was not actually a real thing, I didn’t believe it to be honest. This narrative is so powerful in the dieting space because it always needs to be turned back onto you. For example, if something doesn’t work, it’s because you lack willpower, not because the concept was faulty to begin with.
So why is this concept of willpower faulty?
On a basic biological level, humans need to consume energy to survive. Plants need sunlight and water. We need carbohydrates, protein, fat, water. Because of this, our brains are wired to get us to eat because that is how we get energy. When we consume food our bodies break it down and it eventually ends up being ATP; a fuel source for our cells. In order for this process to happen over and over again, our bodies have a complex network of signals to tell every organ in your body to do its job. For example, when you are low on energy your body signals your brain to start thinking about food, your stomach makes noises and has an “empty” feeling. So then you know it is time to eat, the brain signals “good job!” for eating, and there is another set of communications to say that you have enough energy for now so the body needs to focus on the digestion, breakdown and utilization of this energy.
Now, when your body is in a starved state (restricting, under-eating, too low Calories, etc) then the signals to eat are going to be stronger, more panicked and desperate. To your body, it doesn’t know when the next meal will be. It doesn’t understand the concept of dieting because restriction and weight loss could mean death. So when people say they lack willpower, I see it as their body just really kicks into gear to keep this person alive. It’s not willpower, it’s biology. Do you see why it’s faulty when you turn the concept of willpower around to see it from your body’s point of view? Learning about this realized I had felt so much shame around my “lack of control” around food. I thought it was a moral and physical failing on my part and with working through these concepts I have seen that is not the case at all.
Now I want to answer to some questions to put this is real-life perspective.
“What about overall trying to eat healthier? I do really well for awhile and then I just end up eating junk food again.”
This is about taking away morality of food. Take away the black and white thinking and make it gray. There are no “good” or “bad” foods. You aren’t eating “healthy” or “junk” food. You’re just eating food. Make it as neutral as possible and then you can have a convo with your body about what feels best for you.
“If I keep candy at my desk I’ll just eat it all day.”
This is because you haven’t given yourself permission to eat it whenever, where ever. It becomes enticing when there is deprivation. Normalize it being around then it won’t have so much intrigue.
“My brother dieted and kept the weight off. I tried the same thing, lost the weight and then gained it all back. Why??”
I’ll use the cliche of every body and situation is different. I don’t know the complexities of each of their bodies so I can’t say much more than who knows what really went on with the brother and for the other person’s body that is a pretty clear path of what happens with dieting. With weight loss you body could think you’re starving and slowly dying, so it does what it can to protect you. So that means when the energy is available again it is going to hold on to it in case you go into another starvation mode. You’re not broken, you’re being protected.
To sum it all up…
Your body will always want to eat. Since it can’t force you to eat, it does so in other ways through chemical and hormonal signals to the brain to get you to think about food. Then when you don’t listen it will get louder, it will get you to obsess over it. It’s trying to keep you alive! So heal your relationship with your body, listen to what it is trying to say and “willpower” will no longer need to be in your vocabulary around food. Since this can be difficult and complex to do, a dietitian is a great resource to get to the roots of how you feel about food and your body that cause these feelings of “lack of control.”
Katy Gaston Nutrition
Katy is a registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of Katy Gaston Nutrition based in San Francisco, CA. Katy is passionate about her work in eating disorders and disordered eating (AKA dieting) and wants to help people heal their relationship with food and body. If you would like to work with Katy in counseling sessions, she is available virtually via her services page below. If you are unable to be a client at this time but would like learn more, click here for a free introduction into intuitive eating workbook!
Body Modifications and Body Image
How to work through body image when you want to modify your body cosmetically.
Body modification and what that means for your body image.
To clarify, today I will be talking about body modification in the ways of plastic surgery, tattoos, cosmetic procedures like Botox or laser hair removal, etc. I know that there are body modifications in relation to religious and spiritual practices but those are not what I am going to be referring to today.
When I was working with teens in eating disorder treatment they would ask me “If you’re trying to tell us to accept our bodies just as they are, how come you have tattoos? Isn’t that an attempt to modify yourself?” I think this is a fair point and question, so let’s talk about it.
I will admit I used to be very judgmental when it came to people getting plastic surgery to modify their bodies. I have seen so much of the negative side effects of it and how it did not in fact heal someone’s body image as they had wanted it to. I also saw the physical negatives of having implants or the surgery itself and that the side effects are often not fully conveyed to the recipients. Now I feel that I am much more open and understanding of people wanting to modify their bodies and I think it is more about the root of WHY you want to.
Just like with my tattoos or getting laser hair removal, these procedures are available to me via modern science that I do because I want to, not because I don’t love my body. I know my tattoos will not heal the inner work I need to do on body acceptance and positivity. I know that not needing to shave my underarms anymore doesn’t suddenly make me have magical confidence, I just prefer to have no hair and it saves me time and energy. This is important because it is all about body autonomy and what you feelings about your body are within. I know that my wanting to have no body hair is rooted in body image ideals that are placed upon women-identifying people that you are more worthy with no hair. I have come to accept my body hair and am okay if I don’t shave, I just prefer to not have to. I also love that others have said “eff that” and chosen not to shave at all and have their natural hair grow and shine. Some people dye their hair, some don’t. Some people trim it down, others don’t. Make it all up to you and what you do with your body.
I feel the same about plastic surgery, botox, etc. Part of me is worried that we have normalized these procedures so much that we have a warped idea about what humans look like or allowing people to age “naturally” if they want to. So I want to be very aware of how prevalent this is. I think we need to talk more openly about what work has been done just like which photos have been photoshopped. Not in a way to shame anyone who has had cosmetic surgery, but rather just so we are all on the same page and that these people did not just “start eating healthier” or “started drinking this magical tea that helps me sleep” as a way to say they no longer have wrinkles or a smaller bottom. So again, I realized I was being too harsh on my view of this in the past, especially when you bring in the positives of plastic surgery in the trans community that can bring life-saving medical procedures for people to finally be able to feel themselves.
It is all about the root of WHY you want to modify your body.
Any body modifications are not going to be a quick fix to body acceptance and love. If you so choose to modify yourself in any way, I hope it is done BECAUSE you love your body and not because you hate it and want to “fix” it. In any interaction in the relationship with your body, approach everything with curiosity and compassion, rather than hatred or desperation.
When I approach getting tattoos or laser hair removal I do so with the knowledge that it is FOR me, not for how the outside world will PERCEIVE me.
Katy Gaston Nutrition
Katy is a registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of Katy Gaston Nutrition based in San Francisco, CA. Katy is passionate about her work in eating disorders and disordered eating (AKA dieting) and wants to help people heal their relationship with food and body. If you would like to work with Katy in counseling sessions, she is available virtually via her services page below. If you are unable to be a client at this time but would like learn more, click here for a free introduction into intuitive eating workbook!
Burn It To Earn It: Metabolism Myths
Can you change your metabolism? Can you heal it? What does it mean to have a fast or slow metabolic rate?
Ah, metabolism. The wildly misunderstood and most marketed topic for bogus weight loss wellness products.
Let’s start with the basics - what is metabolism?
Metabolism the is the rate in which you use energy, or Calories. Everyone has a “basal metabolic rate” or baseline rate in which they use this energy to stay alive. Everything in your body takes up energy: maintaining your body temperature, organ function, breathing, digesting, fighting off sickness, using your complicated brain, etc. Everyone is going to have a unique basal rate because every body is unique. That is why the calculators that you see online about how many Calories you should eat in a day are not really helping you out - it is an over simplification of a complicated thing. Even me - a professional Calorie estimator - use these calculations with a grain of salt and have a range with multiple factors that I take into account. Even then, I look to each person’s body to tell me how much energy it truly needs, because really only your unique body can tell you.
Let’s dive into some common metabolism myths.
Myth #1: If you eat less Calories, you lose weight because your metabolism stays the same. To boost you metabolism even higher, you add exercise into the mix.
First major thing that I must stress. YOUR BODY NEEDS ENERGY. Your body is still in the “caveman” era where we lived out in the wild. Food was not guaranteed and the winter months were hard. Therefore your body follows this logic: you’re under-eating (dieting) -> you are hungry and losing weight -> your body panics as this is not good (it thinks it is going into a famine) -> your metabolism slows so it can hold onto any energy it can -> your weight loss plateaus -> you get frustrated and stop under-eating so you gain back weight (usually more than when you started because your body is trying to save up incase it goes into famine mode again) -> you get even more frustrated and again try to under-eat (go on another diet) -> and the cycle starts over and over. You add exercise into this and your body goes into even more panic, not only are you not getting enough energy to maintain, now you’re exercising and using more energy than you usually would. It breaks it down anyway that is can which includes going for muscle. Yes, that is correct, muscle is easier than fat to break down through certain catabolic mechanisms, therefore when you have weight loss, it is not all going to be fat cells - it will be fluid fluctuations and muscle as well. Muscles are right there at the ready, fat cells are like long term storage - you’re not going to go for the emergency funds when your savings account is right there.
On this tangent - “fat burning foods, teas, pills, etc” = marketing BS. Which leads to my next point.
Myth #2: Metabolism “boosters” like teas, weight loss pills, etc really speed up your metabolism.
So incredibly false and harmful. Without looking deep into the ingredients I am going to say the metabolism booster teas probably just have caffeine (along with other things I’m sure), yes, it will give you a burst of energy, maybe make your heart work a little hard but in the long run will NOT “boost” your metabolism. Your body is an expert at adapting, if you suddenly lost all your valuable weight just from drinking a cup of tea everyday then that would not be a very useful evolutionary trait. Remember - to your body weight loss potentially means death. If you are unable to catch enough food on the day-to-day, unable to fluff yourself up for the winter - YOU DIE. Yes, it is that dramatic. But look at it from the stand point of your body - it is an amazing, complicated, intricate, beautiful system that is constantly keeping everything in line so that you can keep on living.
Weight loss pills - basically legal speed. Yes, you will have bursts of energy that cause you to do more but at what cost? So many studies and recalls of diet pills because of the harm that they do to your body. I don’t care if they are marketed as “all natural ingredients” with some berry that is found deep in the rainforest that is the “magical secret” to weight loss. I know weight loss can be a very emotionally charged and desperate search for the Holy Grain (which was a typo but I’m keeping it because it fits) - but just think for a second - do you really think this “magical secret” would be sold in the energy bar aisle of Target? If this was such a gold mine ingredient from the remote jungle, why can you get it for $49.99/bottle next to the cans of Slim Fast? It’s all marketing, marketing banking on your desperation to try ANYTHING. That you’ll be of the 0.0000000000000000000000000000001% that the product “works” on, that this will be the secret key to you making the pounds melt off in 30 days and then stay off forever when you stop taking the pills. Please, please, please stop for just a second the next time you think about giving one of these companies your money. I know the marketing is getting pretty convincing these days because they know consumers have caught on to their usual or cliche terms - so just know - your metabolism is much more complicated than to be “boosted” by a G00p flower petal suppository or whatever else that nonsense has come up with lately.
Myth #3: Your metabolism stays the same. Ie. “I have a fast/slow metabolism.”
Tying into myth #2, your metabolism does not stay the same. It can fluctuate throughout the day, weeks, months, etc. Again, it includes a lot of different factors but like the example I used above, your metabolism might slow if you’re not getting enough energy and it might increase again once you do. Yes, the part about everyone having a different metabolism and basal metabolic rate is true, this is largely due to genetic makeup but it might also be the social environment you’re living in, your history of weight cycling, if you have thyroid abnormalities or other such disease factors, how your body reacts to starvation/famine (under-eating), etc.
So what is the takeaway here?
Your body needs energy to survive. In this modern world with food everywhere and a bombardment of nutrition messages and marketing how do you sort through it all? In my opinion, that is where intuitive eating comes in. When you get back to your roots of listening to your body and trusting your hunger/fullness cues and giving yourself permission to eat any food so that there is not feeling of desperation or deprivation, your metabolism and weight will find their balance. Your body is peaceful and chillin’ when it knows there will be energy when it needs it and therefore you can maintain your weight homeostasis or “set point weight”. This is the weight your body feels best at, so if you are at this weight range and you eat more, metabolism will go up, you eat too little, metabolism will go down. Your body will keep it all in balance. And that is the true “lifestyle change” that you can actually maintain for life.
Katy Gaston Nutrition
Katy is a registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of Katy Gaston Nutrition based in San Francisco, CA. Katy is passionate about her work in eating disorders and disordered eating (AKA dieting) and wants to help people heal their relationship with food and body. If you would like to work with Katy in counseling sessions, she is available virtually via her services page below. If you are unable to be a client at this time but would like learn more, click here for a free introduction into intuitive eating workbook!