Welcome back to "Weight Loss Made Simple." Today, we're going to dive deep into diet trauma and how deprivation can lead to disordered eating. We'll also discuss how to break the cycle through mindful planning. But before we get started, it's important to note that this episode is not intended to diagnose or treat any medical conditions, including eating disorders. If you feel you may have an eating disorder, please consult a qualified healthcare provider for proper diagnosis and treatment.
Now, let's define what diet trauma is. Diet trauma is the emotional and psychological harm that comes from repeated cycles of restricted diets. I wanted to talk about this today because, as the new year approaches, I start to hear these rumblings about everyone's crazy diet plans. If you're anything like me and you've been on the yo-yo dieting train for what seems like forever, you've probably tried some restrictive diets, like the cabbage soup diet, the military diet, or even going from eating three meals a day and snacks to trying to fast all day and do one meal a day. These restrictive diets are traumatizing to our brains because we're literally starving, and the emotional toll that takes on you long-term far exceeds any weight loss you might achieve from those types of diets.
Even more importantly, the next time you try something more moderate, your brain is going to rebel. You might say, "I tried this before, and it worked. But for some reason, I'm having a really hard time doing it again. I used to skip breakfast, but now my brain really wants breakfast. I'm really hungry at breakfast time. I don't know what to do." Or you might think, "I tried Weight Watchers the first time, maybe even the second or third time, and it worked. But this time, I'm just really having a hard time. It's like I can't get totally on board." If any of those sound familiar, that's what's happening here—your brain was traumatized because it truly felt like you were starving, and it doesn't want you to do that again, which makes sense, right?
When we follow these super strict diets, maybe they work for a minute, and we try to do them again because they're not sustainable. There might be the rare snowflake who can stay on them for their entire life, and they feel great—that's wonderful. But most of us cannot do restrictive dieting long-term. So what happens is we've done it once, our brain remembers, and when we try to do it again, maybe we make it all day, but there's probably been a lot of food chatter in your brain all day. You might make it to the end of the day. We've had a rough day, and our brain really doesn't want that discomfort on top of already being uncomfortable from starving. And then we hear, "I messed up. I ruined the whole day. I was doing so great. I even made it through dinner, and then I just went face down into some potato chips after dinner while watching TV. Now it's ruined. I've ruined my diet." Then we feel shame. We feel like we messed up, and we can't recover from it. We feel shame, which is another uncomfortable feeling that our brain doesn't want to deal with when we've already tried to starve it for a couple of days. And then we overeat more.
If you're not aware of the cycle, it's easy to see how overeating can lead to multiple days of eating poorly. So the key is at the beginning of the cycle—deprivation is not sustainable, and it is harmful to our long-term weight loss efforts. Now, if you've been in that cycle and you're freaking out, thinking you've broken your brain, that there's no way to get back, it's not true. I'm going to teach you how. It's actually not hard; it's pretty simple. We're going to plan our food ahead of time.
Let me explain for a minute why we do this. There are two parts of our brain. We have our executive planning brain or prefrontal cortex that is obsessed with our long-term plans. This is what makes logical plans. It's the part of our brain that thinks about what we want 2024 to look like. It says, "This year, I'd like to lose some weight. I have these 15 goals." This is all done by our prefrontal cortex, our executive planning brain. It's a wonderful part of our brain. But then we've got this other little part, our more primitive brain, our caveman brain, which is always on the lookout for danger.
Back in caveman times, we were trying to stay safe, so anything that felt like a threat, our brain would rebel against it. It's very protective and is primarily concerned with immediate gratification—it wants to sleep, eat, and stay out of danger. It doesn't want to work too hard. So if relaxation and a nap could be in there, it's all this part of our brain wants. It's all about pleasure. So weight loss goals are not a concern to the caveman brain. Weight loss doesn't even register as one of its top priorities. This part of our brain kicks in when we've had a very stressful day, so if we're feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or experiencing big emotions, this part of our brain takes over. It's not just fight or freeze—it's big feelings that can put us in this part of our brain. So it makes sense that when we're having big feelings at the end of the day and we're exhausted, this part of our brain wants to eat and rest. It doesn't like to starve, and it interprets all those past diets as dangerous to us.
So we've been depriving ourselves all day, and we're super hungry and super stressed. When we dip into our primitive brain, you can see how our urges go through the roof. That part of our brain knows that if we eat, especially something sugary, we're going to get a dopamine release, and we're going to feel better. So the cycle makes sense. So how does planning keep us from triggering this part of our brain? The answer is it prevents the feeling of being deprived.
You might say to me, "Don't I have to be hungry to lose weight?" and I will argue that no, you do not need to be hungry to lose weight. So we want to transition our mindset from deprivation—I need to starve to lose weight—to abundance—I can eat and feel satisfied, not feel deprived and still lose weight. So how do we do this? When we sit down to make a plan for what we're going to eat for the day, I love to plan dinners for the week. If we sit down to plan, we're using our executive function, that wonderful, smart prefrontal cortex.
What we need to do after that brain has made us a beautiful plan is sit back for a minute, look at it, and ask ourselves, "Is that realistic for me and where I am right now?" If we've been grazing and eating all day for months and months, one day of strict fasting is probably not realistic for us where we are right now. We won't get there if that's something we used to do and it felt good, but we probably can't do it from day one. If we try, we're going to trigger deprivation and start a spiral we don't want. So we make a plan and see if it's realistic. The easiest way to do this is to review what you've been eating for the last few days. Write down everything you've eaten, every bite, every taste, everything that goes into your mouth, without judgment. Just assess where you are and what you can do to change that doesn't feel like deprivation but feels like a step in the right direction.
We don't need to make huge changes on day one to reach our goal. Small, sustainable, feel-good changes will get us the weight loss we want. I promise I've done it, my clients have done it—small changes. It might be as simple as wanting to work on drinking more water this week. So you wake up, and you drink an extra glass of water. That doesn't mean going from not drinking any water all day to drinking 100 ounces of water. It's not what I'm talking about—small steps. I did my diary for three days, and it turns out I'm only drinking coffee and tea. I'm not drinking any water. Maybe we start with one glass of water. Can I drink one glass of water a day? Does that feel like something that's easy, simple, sustainable, and feels good? Feels like I'm doing something nice for myself. Yes, I can drink one glass of water.
Maybe for you, it's pushing breakfast by 30 minutes. Maybe you used to like fasting, and you want to get back into it. Instead of saying, "I did my diary, and I've been eating for 20 hours a day," maybe we say, "Can I just push breakfast by 30 minutes this week?" And then 30 minutes more next week, and another 30 minutes the week after that. Eventually, we've given up fasting, and it feels great. Maybe your goal is to add more vegetables. So you say, "I did this experiment. I'm going to add more vegetables to my diet this week. Can I eat two vegetables a day instead of one or none?" Many days, I had none, right? So I went with, "Can I do one? Can I eat one vegetable a day on more days than not?" It's not an all-or-nothing approach. More days, eat one. More days, drink a glass of water. We need to approach it with compassion and self-care.
We've got to understand that our inner cavewoman does not want to starve, and she'll fight if it feels like we're going down that path again. She doesn't like to feel bad; she wants to sleep. So if we're having lots of uncomfortable feelings, she'll try to stop that. We just have to be compassionate about that.
So, we've talked about a lot today, but it really boils down to two simple things: mindful planning and self-compassion, self-care. With mindful planning, we make a plan when we're calm and thinking about our goals, and then we make sure that plan is reasonable. We feel 90% confident that we can stick to it realistically. Self-care and self-compassion are essential because our primitive brain doesn't want to starve, and it'll fight if it feels threatened.
Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope this episode has been helpful, and I look forward to talking to you next week.