Every year I come out with some sort of “anti-detox” post about why you should probably stop doing whatever you decided to do on January 1 (ok let’s be real, January 2) to lose weight or get healthy or WHATEVER because it’s probably doing more harm than good.
Last year’s post, 10 Ways to Anti-Detox Your Life This Year, is still 100% relevant today and one of myDietitian’s most popular posts. So once you’re done reading this, head that way!
I wanna do something a little different thing year, though.
There is really nothing more freeing…and nothing that makes you feel more alive…than breaking a few rules, amiright?
Rules can also give us a complex and get into our head and make us feel “guilty” if we don’t abide by them. Guilt is a really shitty feeling that does a hell of a lot more harm than good.
So, before you start putting a bunch of restrictions on yourself this week. Before you roll out your list of DIET RULES. Before you totally over-do it on your “goals” and then ultimately quit, I’ve got a list of 8 rules I actually WANT you to break this year.
Doesn’t that sound WAY MORE FUN than New Year Resolutions?!
Calories are stupid, and here are 6 reasons why if you wanna dig deep. But the bottom line is, 98% of calorie reduction diets do NOT work long-term (according to research, not me), bc ultimately, you just end up slowing your metabolism down. You MUST feed your body the right foods to rev up your metabolism, NOT take them away.
I’m sorry, but who the HELL has an hour every day to work out? If you work HARD for 20-40 minutes/day (think sprints, HIIT, and weight lifting), not only will this be more effective for weight loss and toning, it’ll be a lot easier on your body and your schedule.
While it’s important to eat the RIGHT foods for your first meal, eating within 30 minutes is totally not necessary. Actually, you SHOULD wait to eat breakfast a full 12 hours after your last meal the night before to tap into your fat burning power.
If your body wasn’t able to naturally detoxify itself, you’d be dead. You don’t have to do any weird shit to your body to “detox”. The easiest way to detox is to do it every day by – yep – “fasting” for at least 12 hours/day.
OK so this is oddly specific, but I recently heard a VERY popular, VERY public dietitian say this and ooooo it made me mad! Yes, they are high in fat, but they are INCREDIBLY filling because of their fat AND fiber content. I highly recommend eating 1/2 avocado every day if you trying to lose weight.
While I absolutely think this can be helpful when starting to really pay attention to how certain foods make you feel, it’s not something I ever recommend for more than 30 days. If you stop thinking about food all the time, you can actually start enjoying it.
The perimeter includes mostly whole foods and the aisles are where you’ll find the processed stuff. But hey, not all processed foods are created equal. I ALWAYS grab some high fiber crackers (like GG or Mary’s or Wasa), brown rice cakes, and lentil or chickpea pasta, and I hit up the canned aisle for tuna, salmon, potatoes, and green beans for snacks.
Look – there are some great diet/health/weight loss programs out there. But UNDERSTAND ONE THING: perfection is shit, and the all or nothing mentality is the reason diets and lifestyle changes fail year after year. This is why you have one bad snack and let it turn into a bad day…then week…then month. NO PLAN is “perfect” for you. And this is important to expand on, so read on.
I don’t care if you are vegetarian, vegan, paleo, gluten-free, if feel the best eating low-carb, high-carb, high-fat, plant-based….you MUST figure out what foods make you feel good and what foods don’t. Eating more than 2 egg yolks make me feel like shit. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t eat 3 for breakfast every day.
LOVE YOU GUYS.
Megan
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