Dieting Vs. Non Dieting: 5 Myths Designed to Keep you Chained to Emotional Eating

Diets don't work for most people. If you're a gal who's been struggling with trying to watch your weight, you know that it's very difficult to stick to a diet. By exposing these myths, I'd like to help you to make the leap that will move you beyond a life restricted by dieting so that you can finally gain freedom from emotional eating.

Myth #1 - Eat three meals a day plus healthy snacks "Oh boy, it's 12:00. We should be eating now." Have you been eating by the clock? This is entirely too much emphasis on food and eating. In order to truly become free of food's psychological tug on you, it's important to tune back into your body's feelings and sensations of hunger. Diets encourage people to fear their hunger, and to avoid it at all costs. The implied message in that is that you just can't be trusted around food because you have a feast beast lurking inside of you, just waiting to pounce and eat everything in sight. That's a lot of hooey!

Your body has it's own clock and way of telling you when it wants to eat. Through years of dieting, that sensitivity has been dulled down and anesthetized. The good news is you can learn how to tune into that awareness anytime despite years of dieting.

Myth #2 - Eat a good breakfast - On a typical morning, you have most likely been resting all night long, and during that time, all your body processes have gone into sleep mode, slowing down and going into a rest phase expending very little energy. Unless you are a farm worker, like my dear friend Sandy who owned a dairy farm in Albany, New York and had to wake up at the crack of dawn to milk her cows, you don't have to have a big hearty breakfast to fuel up for the hard work ahead. It's up to you, but when you actually have a choice, you may not want to eat a big breakfast every day. Wouldn't it be nice to have a choice again?

Myth #3 - Eat only lowfat or diet foods - For the most part these foods are laboratory produced and contain large amounts of additives and chemicals to make them taste good so you'll end up eating more. Without even knowing it, you've been practicing non fat gluttony.

In fact what has been happening is that you've been conditioned to overeat these foods, thinking that they are okay because they are less calories. The sad thing is that this kind of thinking contributes to the kind of compulsive eating behavior that may have contributed to your being overweight but it's not too late to undo the damage. When you begin to eat the real food that you crave as opposed to the sugar or fat free substitute that you've come to know so well, you will experience a new level of satisfaction in your eating. Fat by its very nature satisfies the body longer. It takes a longer time to metabolize and it stays with you.

Myth #4 - Don't eat beyond a certain hour. Now honestly do you really think that your body stops working and processing food after let's say 6:00 in the evening? No way. It's all according to your own personal schedule and what you've eaten throughout the day. In other words, it's all up to you and what you feel is appropriate. When I began to stop dieting almost a year ago, when I would get hungry at night, I would probably have chosen something that would have seemed more forbidden, now it doesn't turn me on the way that it used to. The allure is gone. My tastes have changed without even trying.

Myth #5 - Avoid fattening foods. Those are the best foods aren't they? They are the ones that you want the most. By continually avoiding those foods you are denying and depriving yourself. Noone likes to be told what they can and can not do. If you believe that certain foods are off limits, then you will want them more. You'll feel deprived not having them and crave them like mad.

The ultimate decision is yours. To diet or not to diet. Consider this. By filling your pantries and stocking your cabinets and refrigerators with real food, you are sending your brain a message that you are not depriving yourself any longer. You are telling your body that the drought is over and it can begin to relax and before you know it, you'll look at those foods with new eyes. This non diet approach along with learning how to cope with your emotions besides eating is the secret to losing weight without dieting.

Andrea Amador, CEC, M.NLP is President of The Juicy Woman. She is devoted to empowering women to love themselves more, yummy up their lives and lose weight without dieting. Join her free Yahoo group: http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/thejuicywoman/