3 Mindset Shifts To Ditch Diets For Good And Create Consistent Eating Habits
3 Mindset Shifts To Ditch Diets For Good And Create Consistent Eating Habits
Are you fed up with jumping onto diets, only to fall straight off? Wish you could get sustainable, long-term results? It’s time to look at your mindset around food.
There are 3 key mindset shifts that I teach my clients to make when they want to create consistent healthy eating habits.
What is diet mentality?
First up, we need to understand what diet mentality entails and why it’s not what you want.
To put it simply, diet mentality is a way of thinking where you believe that certain foods are ‘good’ or ‘bad’. It could be only eating ‘clean’ foods, restricting calories and food to reach your desired weight, cutting out food groups to be healthy, or a combination.
This type of thinking is usually based on restrictive diet approaches. They promise quick, drastic results (like the ones you see in before-and-after pictures) but will fail to provide you the tools you need for sustainable results and long-term success.
So as a result, you fall off the wagon, and because you’ve been restricted you’re likely to swing the other way. You’ll have days, weeks or even months of eating all of the ‘forbidden’ foods, feel guilty, and then return to the pattern of restriction. It’s a never-ending cycle unless you take steps to alter this mindset.
True health and body composition changes don’t come from cycling through short-term plans.
The real secret to long-term change is in the small consistent habits that take a long time to achieve. Unfortunately, most people don’t have the level of patience needed for these changes to take place.
Mindset shifts for healthy eating habits
Are you ready to get off the yo-yo dieting bandwagon and start developing the healthy habits that can change your life? There are 3 shifts that need to take place to throw out the diet mentality and replace it with a healthier attitude to food.
Cultivating patience
As I mentioned, most people will give up before lasting habits set in and start to show results. It’s easy to want to jump into a shiny new diet and make drastic changes overnight. But this will usually lead to burnout, frustration and disappointment.
The unfortunate truth is that creating healthy habits takes time! So you need to give yourself grace and be kind to yourself along the way.
Don’t beat yourself up if you make a mistake, slip up on your diet or find yourself stuck without a healthy option. It’s all part of learning, growing and adapting to your new way of life. With patience and consistency, you will be able to create the lasting habits that will serve you for a lifetime!
So how can you encourage patience? Some options include:
Having an accountability buddy or coach who can give you perspective and feedback
Tracking your progression with a calendar on the wall, so you can see your progress and persistence (rather than perfection on daily basis!)
Setting goals centred around your actions and habits, rather than your outcomes e.g. work out 3 times per week over lose 0.5kg per week
Making sure you track and acknowledge non-scale victories (improvements outside of your immediate goal) – for example, you might not see the scale drop one week, but you are sleeping better, feeling more able to cope with stressful days, have increased energy
Incorporating habits and activities that you enjoy into your daily routine – you’re more likely to stick to these for longer because you have the benefit of enjoyment!
Listening to your body
It is hard to break free of the cycle of dieting and switching to consistent eating habits. We’re constantly bombarded with messages about what to eat, what not to eat, how we should look, how we should live… it’s easy to be overwhelmed and confused by it all. You can become lost in the ‘noise’ online and forget to tune into what your body needs.
Why is this so critical to do? Because every body is unique – you’ll respond to different foods and eating patterns in a different way to the person next to you. But if you can learn how to listen to your body, it can guide you on what is best for you.
Do you eat on the run, grab a quick bite to eat before a meeting, skip a workout because you’re low on time, or eat while you’re scrolling through Instagram or Tik Tok? These aren’t a big deal if it’s a rare occasion. But if you find yourself doing them more often than not, you are disconnecting the communication channel between yourself and your body.
So how can we listen to our bodies better?
By incorporating a practice of mindfulness. Mindfulness helps us to be aware of our physical and emotional reactions to food, so we can make informed decisions about what we eat, how we eat it and how much we eat. It also allows us to notice how we feel after eating – energised, bloated, exhausted – so we can make better decisions in the future.
Mindfulness is particularly important if you’ve ever struggled with disordered eating patterns or problems with regulating your eating habits. You can learn to trust yourself more when it comes to your food choices.
When we talk about mindfulness, meditation is often the first practice that comes to mind. But it can also be:
Mindful eating (I share more about my mindful eating routine here)
Deep breathing or breathwork
Noticing your emotions
Noticing your thoughts and self-talk when you prepare and eat food
Mindful walks & exercise (this might not be directly related to food, but the more you practice mindfulness, the more it will seep into other areas of your life!)
Did you know? In my coaching program, we have an amazing meditation teacher! Hannah is here to help you incorporate more mindfulness into your everyday life – learn more about the program here.
Ditch the black-and-white rules
Society has programmed us to rely on rules and restrictions when it comes to how we eat for health. But relying on rules means less flexibility, leading to you feeling deprived. And when you tell your mind (which can act a bit like a toddler sometimes) that it can’t have something, what happens? It starts shouting even louder until you give in and ‘break’ the rule.
Healthy eating doesn’t require you to follow strict rules (unless of course you have a health condition like Coeliac disease!) It’s about creating sustainable habits and patterns that you can stick to long-term.
So instead of rules that dictate what you can and can’t eat? Focus on creating a healthy relationship with food.
Incorporate nutrient-dense foods that make you feel good. Indulge in your favourite foods mindfully (see the previous point!) and with intention. Listen to your body’s cues, because sometimes you won’t feel like a certain food and that’s ok.
This leads to a more flexible approach to eating that you can stick with. And when you stick with it, you’ll finally see that transformation you’ve been longing for!
Looking for more mindset tips along with delicious recipes and actionable advice to transform your wellbeing?
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Hey there, I’m Rachel!
NUTRITIONIST, PERSONAL TRAINER, WELLNESS COACH
Here I share healthy recipe ideas, training plans, and nutrition & wellness advice you need to know.
Check out my free guide to healthy eating to design your own version of a healthy lifestyle so that you can feel energised and vibrant, or hire me to work my magic on your health through mindset, nutrition, and movement.
While we make every effort to make sure the information in this website is accurate and informative, the information does not take the place of medical advice.