Is another diet the answer?

Just like it may take dedicated periods of muscle gain & fat loss to craft a physique, it will likely take a period of improving your relationship with food before trying to (once again) lose weight.

It’s well accepted in the fitness community that stages of change between muscle gain and fat loss will, in most cases, need to be separate. There are competing interests in terms of energy demands and work capacity. Yet when we approach nutrition we often think that we can dedicate our time to weight loss with no consideration for how that affects our relationship with food.

The diet industry often falls into the camp of “let’s just get you to your goal weight and then we can work on all this other stuff.” Yet this just exacerbates all the “other stuff”.

To be clear, none of this relates if you have a healthy relationship with food and with body change. However, if you’ve got a history of cyclical dieting it’s probably something you should be aware of.

Instead of a focus on weight loss in conjunction with a pursuit of an improved food relationship, engage in activities that promote physical, emotional and cognitive health. Walk, run, hike, lift, cook, socialize and laugh. Practice mindfulness and gratitude.

While none of these things are weight loss strategies, improved habits in these areas may lead to weight loss. But if not, they will most definitely lead to improved health. And set you on a path to where intentional weight loss carries far fewer long term ramifications.