You’re smart. You already know that health is a marathon, not a sprint. But at times, you’ve been so blinded by the desire to lose weight, so motivated to break free from that ‘ick’ feeling in your body, that you go from never exercising to signing up for a 5am boot-camp (even though you hate circuit training). Or you return to a weight-loss method that once worked for you, only to find you can no longer stick to it, a common state called diet burnout. And so you oscillate from daily takeaway and boozy weekends to kale salads and nightly meditation.
This is the all-too-familiar diet rollercoaster. In this chapter, we’ll talk about the things that keep you stuck on the diet rollercoaster, and how to get off at the next stop and return to solid ground.
Like me (and probably you as well), my client Katie had spent her whole life dieting. So by the time she arrived at our first appointment, she’d been trapped in the all-or-nothing cycle with food and her weight for many of her 36 years. And now, she was finally done.
She leaned towards me, removed her reading glasses, and explained in a clear, calm voice, ‘Lyndi, I’m not expecting perfection, but I would love to be able to stop swinging from “being good” to eating to the point of being uncomfortable.’ I knew exactly what she was talking about. Then she added, ‘I’d also love to be able to eat a biscuit or a piece of chocolate without being driven to finish the packet. I’ve been doing that my whole life and it’s not working for me.’
