Dump the Diet Mindset!

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You're listening to Smaller Stomach, Bigger Life.
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Practical guidance, psychological insight and real world support for anybody on a GLP-1
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or weight loss surgery journey. Follow this podcast so you don't miss a thing.
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Today I wanted to dive into something that I see day in day out with most of the patients
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that go through bariatric surgery and that whole journey. And one of my biggest jobs,
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I think, as far as supporting people after surgery, is trying to get them to not think
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like a dieter anymore. So most people come to the stage of having surgery with a really
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long dieting history. They've been on every crazy diet over the years and each time they've
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been on one of these diets, they learn a little bit more that they sort of add to their set
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of beliefs about what it takes to lose weight. And quite often these set of beliefs have
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been carried over from one diet to the next, added to, they've built up this whole library
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of beliefs about weight loss and about all the rules that should apply to it. And one
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of the questions I always ask is, if this worked, we wouldn't be here. So in other words,
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if the dieting rules had worked, if you'd really hit on an amazing formula here, why
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are we sitting here talking about bariatric surgery or the possibility of that? So getting
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rid of those dieting rules, that dieting mindset that we develop sometimes over decades before
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people come for surgery, it's really important to try and let that go and develop a whole
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new attitude around food, attitude around your body maybe, and attitude about how you
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make your choices in that situation. So the truth is, the dieting mindset that shaped
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your past is often the very thing that could hold you back in your future. It's really
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important to say that, and it's really important that you have a red hot go at trying to get
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rid of all those dieting led thoughts. So let's think back to the beginning about what
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all those diets may have taught you over the years. So most of us, as I say, have a
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long history of dieting, and we've probably tried everything, even the crazy stuff. So
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we've discovered that carbohydrates are terrible. You can't have any of those. We've discovered
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that calories are something that is meant to be counted. We've discovered that shakes
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are a completely viable option to have as an entire meal. We've discovered that fasting
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can be a good idea sometimes, especially intermittent fasting. So we've learned on one diet or either
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that eating between certain times is what it's all about. Even, I remember one diet
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I did years and years ago, the blood group diet. Did anyone try that one? So whatever
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your blood group is, that dictates exactly what you should and shouldn't eat. I remember
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going on another diet, oh, this was even longer ago, where it involved an awful lot of eating
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bananas. I think there was about five days where you had to eat a sort of homemade vegetable
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soup and then on one day you ate nothing but bananas, eight bananas and milk, I think was
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something like that. I don't honestly know what the point of that diet was, but I remember
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going on it. So we come with all these rules, things that we believe we've learned, not
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to eat after a certain time, not to eat a certain thing, not to eat a certain thing
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in conjunction with another thing. So try and think of the weirdest diets you've been
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on and each time I think there's some part of these diets that we reject as being nonsense,
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but there might be a tiny part of that diet that on some level made sense to us. And these
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are the little building blocks that from every diet that we go on, we kind of pull a little
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bit of information out of that diet and go, yeah, but that bit seems to make sense. And
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then we tack it onto something else until in the end, we've got this whole structure,
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this whole foundation of dieting, which we kind of believe in. But as I say, why do we
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believe it? The evidence is not there that it worked. So basically we did this for years
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and years and years. We were good in inverted commas during the week. Maybe sometimes we
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weren't so good at the weekends, but when it failed, we really took it as a personal
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failure. We have failed on this diet because whoever sold us the diet is still out there
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telling us that had we stuck to the rules, we would have been successful. So it's really sold
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to us as our failure. So all these diets over the years are generally built on things like
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restriction, deprivation, control, and also short-term outcomes. And sometimes the diet
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delivers on a short-term basis, but not really on a long-term basis. So diets teach us what
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to eat. They teach us when to eat, how much to eat, sometimes how to eat. But what they don't
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teach us is how to actually trust our bodies, how to handle those emotional triggers that might
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happen around food, and also how to feel safe around food, how to trust it and how to trust
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ourselves with it. So we learn along the way that we kind of can't be trusted and we can't
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trust ourselves. We need those rules, otherwise everything will go horribly wrong. And what we
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have to get back to is that innate trust in ourselves and in our bodies. We had it when
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you think about it. We had it. We were born with it. Somewhere along the line, we actually lost it.
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So after bariatric surgery, your body changes, your anatomy changes, but your mindset doesn't
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necessarily automatically upgrade with that. This is something that we have to work on. So when you
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carry over those same rigid rules into this new chapter of your life, you create some internal
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conflicts, I suppose. Things like telling yourself, I shouldn't have cravings anymore. I shouldn't want
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this. I shouldn't want something sweet. I shouldn't still like chocolate or cake. Or those feelings
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that, well, I've ruined everything now because I had this tiny little morsel of something that wasn't
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on my safe list. Or that old idea of, I'll start again on Monday. Or even the idea that this takes
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a level of concentration to do. And unless I'm completely switched on and concentrating on
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exactly what I eat 24-7, I'm going to fail. So we build up all these rigid rules. And of course,
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most of these rules are unsustainable. We should have learnt that over the years and years of
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dieting. Because we didn't sustain them then, how are we going to sustain them now? And this is what
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we have to get rid of and think of another way. So that dieting mentality tells us we're either
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on track or we're off track. It leads to what we call black and white thinking. The fact that
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something's either good or it's bad. And that if we're not succeeding, then we must be failing.
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But in real life, there's nuance. You know, there's these grey areas of us succeeding but maybe not in
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the way that we thought we would succeed. And maybe not by the way of imposing hard and fast
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rules on ourselves. So we have other things in life to deal with. We've got family, we've got
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emotions, we've got responsibilities, we've got work, we've got all these other things that we're
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juggling in addition to our relationship with food. So if we make one little mistake in any of those
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areas, does it mean we're a complete failure and we've completely blown it? So in other words,
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I mean, let's think of an example work as being one of the categories. Imagine one day you have
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a power cut and your alarm doesn't go off and you are late to work that day. Does that mean you're
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terrible at your job? Does that mean they should sack you, get rid of you because you were late
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on one day? Does that mean the education that you paid for and worked hard at to get into the job
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you've got, is that all meaningless because you were late for one day at work? You know,
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we've got to get some perspective over one little dietary indiscretion and what it might mean for
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the whole plan. And we need to look at life after bariatric surgery as much more of a long-term set
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up. And you then have to think, does that moment of indiscretion affect the rest of my life living
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with it? So it's taking us away from that short-term thinking that we have during a diet,
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where it's all about, I have to get to a certain weight by a certain time. And there seems to be
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some urgency to it with dieting. So we haven't blown it if we make one mistake. We're not either
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good or bad or a success or a failure. This is a learned thinking pattern that we've had through
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years and years of dieting. So the surgery will change your stomach mainly because most bariatric
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procedures have a restrictive element to them. But it doesn't necessarily change things like
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emotional eating or feeling guilty around the food or the reasons that we might actually self-sabotage
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or things like body image struggles. It doesn't change any of that. So in a world where there's
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all these things that feel unsure around food, what we tend to do is rely on rules to stay in
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control instead of actually doing the deeper work and actually looking at, well, hold on,
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why do I do these things? Why do my emotions take me straight to the fridge or to the cupboard? Why
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do I feel this way about my body? I wonder why I feel guilty about eating nice tasting foods
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or indulgent foods. Where does that guilt come from? Or why am I sabotaging my own efforts? We
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really need to look at what's going on underneath rather than just saying, I recognize these things
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are happening and I'll just impose rules to stop them happening because that simply doesn't work.
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And it leads to frustration. It leads to that sense of failure yet again, that also sense that you're
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back where you started. So you have to start, you know, the hard and fast rules start every Monday
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morning. And by the end of the week, we're not quite there anymore. So we start again on the
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Monday. We really want to get away from that type of thinking. It sort of sets us up for this cyclic
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behavior pattern, which we've been through time and time again. And we really want to break free
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from that. So let's think about us as we age, because generally we know with bariatric patients,
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the most common time to have surgery is actually in your forties. So generally by that time, you
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have been through a lot of diet years, probably 20 or so diet years. And when you think how your
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body has changed in that time as well, we're not even dealing with the same body that we were
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dealing with when we were 20, when we're 40 or we're 60. Lots and lots of things change as well
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as our life situation and our priorities change during that time. So really, the last thing we
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need is more rules. We need to enter a time in our lives where we start to actually treat ourselves
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with a bit more kindness and less judgment than maybe we have up to that point. What we actually
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need is to learn self-trust, to trust ourselves and our body, to learn compassion towards ourselves
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and also to others. We're very judgmental of ourselves sometimes, but I hear a lot of people
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be very judgmental towards others as well. We need more emotional awareness and we need more
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flexibility really around our emotions as well. And this is where something called food freedom
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comes in. And when I use that word, quite often people think this is an impossible thing to
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actually feel this sense of liberation around food, to be free of all these rules. And that
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doesn't mean chaos because a lot of people view that as, well, if I just give up all these rules,
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chaos will ensue. It will be, I'll eat whatever I want, whenever I want, and I will just pile on
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the way instantly. But it doesn't actually mean letting go of everything and having a situation
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where you're just stuffing yourself all day, every day. What it means is having a more intentional
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relationship with food, a more grounded and intentional relationship with food, where you
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actually listen to what your body's telling you and you respond instead of react. So once you've
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taken a chance to listen and learn what your body's telling you, you choose a response rather
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than a knee-jerk reaction. And we're also removing guilt from the equation altogether. And we actually
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become curious about ourselves and why we make decisions, why we make these choices, not judging
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ourselves and feeling guilty about those decisions that we've actually made. So letting go of these
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diet rules doesn't mean that we don't care. It doesn't mean we're being lazy. It doesn't mean
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we're losing control. It means we're choosing something that's more sustainable long term.
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We're choosing to align with our body and also to align with the bariatric procedure, whatever it
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is that you've had. We're learning to work with that and befriend it, if you like. I often say to my
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patients, if you can make a friend out of your sleeve or a friend out of your bypass, you're
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going to do much better in the long term. If you turn your bariatric procedure into the enemy and
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view it as something that stops you doing something. So saying something like, my sleeve is stopping me
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having that all-you-can-eat buffet or my bypass is stopping me having fun. And we start to view
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this thing as an enemy. You're going to constantly struggle with that probably for the rest of your
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life. So we've really got to look at it as a friend, as a friend that actually wants the
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best for us. And we have to really align with it. We have to choose to have a relationship with food
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that actually supports our life, supports our lifestyle and supports our health, rather than
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those hard and fast rules of something that requires commitment and concentration. And if
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we're not there, then we feel that we've failed. Because quite often I will set, say, a little
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homework task for someone that comes to see me. And they come back and they haven't done that task
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and they go, ah, I've been so busy, I haven't even had time to think about this thing. And I always
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respond by saying, this shouldn't take time to think about. You know, we don't spend our time
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thinking about how am I going to breathe tomorrow? What breathing plan have I got? How am I going to
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breathe around breakfast time? How am I going to breathe through that meeting at work? How am I
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going to breathe in the car on the way home? You know, we don't think about that. We just do it
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automatically. It doesn't require any thought. And again, our eating shouldn't be the main thing
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that's on our minds. It's something that we do and hopefully something that we actually really enjoy.
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But it shouldn't take up 99% of our thought processes. So in other words, it shouldn't
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require that level of concentration or attention that sometimes we give it during dieting.
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So I really encourage you to move forward and move away from dieting. As I said before, those rules
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that we learnt and we lived by, sometimes for many years, a lot of them simply don't
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work well in the context of bariatrics. And as I said right at the beginning, this is my most
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difficult job in the work that I do, is getting people to just leave that stuff alone. And I say
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things like, you know, if it was working, we wouldn't be here. And if diets did work, I would
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absolutely get you to do one rather than have surgery. Wouldn't that be brilliant? But
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unfortunately, they do not work. Whereas surgery can absolutely work and GLP-1 medications can
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absolutely work. But you have to have a change in your outlook. You have to really go back and
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reassess all the things that you've been sort of hiding behind, I suppose, by creating rules and
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thinking that if you live by a rule, instead of actually checking in on how your emotions are
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working and how your body feels, then these are the things that we have to go back and kind of
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reconsider after surgery or after any sort of weight loss. So hopefully this episode,
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even the tiniest thing that I've said today, maybe broke through just a little bit for you.
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And if that's the case, then great. So take a moment to reflect. Why am I still holding on to
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diet rules when I know they didn't work? That's what I'm going to put in brackets after that. We
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know these things don't work. Why do we still hold on to them? Also, what would it feel like if you
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were able to just release them? Let go of all the guilt and the shame and the doubt and the rules
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and the planning and the overthinking. What would happen if that just disappeared? How would that
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feel? And also, what sort of relationship with food do I actually want going forward? And I often
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reword this slightly in the work I do, and I say to patients, you have to decide what sort of life
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you want to live for the rest of your life. Do you want to spend it constantly thinking about food,
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constantly thinking about calories or the effect of those calories on your body? Do you want to
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live like that for the rest of your life? And quite often that's how that person's been living for the
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last 10, 20, 30, even 40 years. Do you want to carry on doing that? Do you want to spend your whole
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entire life thinking that way? Or do you want some freedom, some liberation from that way of thinking?
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So hopefully this has resonated with you. If you think it would resonate with someone else,
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lead them into this podcast. Also, it's worth mentioning that I do one-to-one private work with
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my patients who are going through surgery or who are on GLP-1 medications. That is open to you as
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well. You just need to email me to find out more about that. My email address is in the show notes.
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And if you did want to work with me personally, I'm absolutely open to doing that with a select
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few of you because I have a limited schedule, so I can't do this for everybody. But I have got a
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few little gaps at the moment that I could fill. So have a think about that. And I hope that I will
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also have your company next week. Thank you so much for your attention and listening to Smaller
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Stomach, Bigger Life once again. And I hope to catch you next week. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye.
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Don't forget to check the links in the episode notes to our six-week Change Your Relationship
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with Food course and to the Change Your Relationship with Food workbook and journal,
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which is available on Amazon.