Welcome to How to Love Your Body on today’s episode we are talking about DIET BRAIN.

This is the effect that being a dieter has on our brains and our thinking.

If you already know that your thinking and mindset has been affected by dieting before we even get into it you're welcome to grab our 5 day UnDiet Mindset Boost at bit.ly/undietboost

Let’s get started

A little biology note before we get to our main focus, mindset and ways of thinking.

When we restrict calories from our brain this leads to rigid thinking, creative thinking goes out the window and we cannot go with flow very easily. This makes so much sense to me because whenever I was dieting it was always so rigid, and honestly never very logical. Eat a piece of chocolate and screw it, may as well eat the whole cupboard. And I did this so often, how does any of that make any sense? I couldn’t be flexible with my thinking or see things that were staring me in the face - like I should not be obsessing over food this much and it isn't healthy to be dieting all week just to binge on the weekends.

So know that when you’re dieting it biologically is going to affect the way you think - so you can’t always trust your dieting brain to give you the best answers which is one big reason that we love to support people in this work because with a dieting brain it can be really challenging to find your way out on your own.

But let’s move onto how dieting affects our mindset and thinking around food and body.

DIET BRAIN: Preoccupation with food - thinking of what you’re eating next, calories tallying up in your head, feeling almost out of control or gluttonous because you always think about food

The natural state: Think about food when you’re hungry, enjoy food and be excited for a great meal but its not the focus of your thoughts

DIET BRAIN: Picking apart your body, body checking, weighing yourself regularly, being focused on how clothes fit

The natural state: Your body’s value doesn't come from the way it looks, naturally we would focus on how we feel, weight would be a non issue (and it WAS until insurance companies decided that weight was a nice easy measurement of health and doctors took that on too). If clothes were too tight or didn’t feel good we would get new ones.

 

DIET BRAIN: All or nothing thinking - being perfect, following a plan or SCREW IT! Going all out, last supper effect.

 

Natural state: Ebb and flow, naturally eat more some days and less on others, honor cravings in a way that feels good and is satisfying.

 

The good news is we can ALL get back to this natural state.

It just takes some mindset work and a new way to relate to food and our bodies.

We welcome you into our free 5 day UnDiet Mindset Boost - this is a 5 day series that will give you small but important daily mindset activities to begin making this shift back into your natural state of thinking.

You can grab the mindset boost at bit.ly/undietboost