Does the word diet make you feel restricted? Mentally saying goodbye to food you love? You’re not alone. Dieting, especially extreme crash diets, do more harm than good. They wreak havoc on metabolism and damage our confidence and perception of food.
Healthy meal planning is not a diet. Rather a guide teaching to bring out the healthiest version of yourself. Tap into a balanced, well rounded meal plan to live your best, vibrant life.
Here are 5 ways to break up with diet culture once and for all.
Listen to Your Body
What works for your friend may not work for you. Listen to how your body responds to different foods and exercise. Connecting to your body empowers long term healthy choices.
We can all follow basic tips. Eat real food, drink water, exercise, spend time outdoors, get those veggies on your plate.
Dig deeper and explore, listen and respond to what works best for you. Dishquo’s meal planning app has a variety of customizations for you to explore and choose. Can’t eat gluten? No problem. Have a kid allergic to nuts? We can plan for that.
Honor both your hunger, fullness and thirst. Our fast moving, high demand culture makes eating on the go common. Take time to sit down, eat and drink, without a device. Make space to listen to the clues your body is sending.
During the meal and after, reflect on how you feel. Did you eat too little or too much? Are you energized or tired? How is your focus? Your body is a wonderful creation showing you how to nourish yourself. Listening to your body puts you in the driver’s seat, rather than feeling “you have to do what a diet says”. You now know how to give your body what it needs.
Journal or Meditate
Listening to your body includes your emotions. Emotions play a big role in the food we eat and the habits we have. Emotional eating is common, but derails your best efforts in the kitchen and gym.
Find an outlet to process and release challenging emotions. This leaves us to enjoy food for what it’s meant for, delicious nourishment for our body. Journaling, meditation, art and listening to music are great tools to process how we’re feeling. Take time to try different things and learn what works best for you.
Make Exercise Fun
Your body is made to move, grow, heal and strengthen. A traditional gym setting may not be fun for you. And that’s ok! There are so many ways we can enjoy the benefits of exercise.
Ignore trends and start exploring. If you love nature, find local trails to walk and hike. Love music? Join a cardio dance class, look up a local dance studio or get grooving in your living room for 30 minutes. Have fun with it! Inviting a friend to join you is a great way to make the minutes roll by while sweating it out. Adult sport leagues are a great way to exercise with like minded friends.
If none of this peaks your interest, try bringing small bursts of movement into your daily life. With many working from home now, this is easy to do. Take 10 minutes between meetings to walk down your street. Try walking lunges down your hallway. Zoom fatigue? Boost your energy with a couple sets of jumping jacks.
Food – Friend or Foe?
How do you see food? Diet culture labels foods as good or bad. Kale? Good! Pie? Bad! If we’re immersed in a diet mindset what happens on Thanksgiving day? You’ll eat the pumpkin pie topped with guilt and shame. This mindset never leads to long term success.
No doubt, some foods nourish our body more than others. But healing our relationship with food is important to long success. We can change our mindset around how we see and think about food. Like with exercise, trying new foods and cooking methods do that. An adventurous approach to cooking introduces us to new, healthy foods we can enjoy! The Dishquo meal planning app has hundreds of simple, healthy recipes to help you get started.
Practice Intuitive Eating
Intuitive eating develops your ability to listen to your body signals. Hunger and fullness cues, responses to foods and emotional connection to eating patterns. Listening, exploring new foods, changing our mindset around food all tie together here. When we eat intuitively, you don’t need a diet or quick fix plan. You know, understand and honor your body through the choices you know are best.
Following a meal planning service can co-exist with intuitive eating. The plan removes heavy thinking and planning on your part. Easy to follow, your job is to pay attention to how your body responds. With Dishquo, if you’re tired after a meal with dairy, you can adjust your setting to what you learned. Planning your birthday dinner at your favorite restaurant? Skip the meal and jump back on the next morning, no shame, no guilt.
Diet culture is all around us, but you don’t have to join in. Paving your own path for lasting, healthy change is possible. Start with small steps and celebrate the wins. You’ve got this.
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