The Key to Losing Weight is a 'No Rules' Approach

For years I've yo-yo dieted.
For the past six months I've been experimenting with different ways of eating and doing some deep internal work in a bid to lose weight and keep it off.
I think I've finally cracked an easier way to lose weight.
I've started implementing my approach this week and have decided to blog about it here to share my findings with others on the same path.
I wanted to blog as I went along when my experiences were fresh rather than later.

I've dieted practically every week of my life since my teenage years.
As every yo-yo dieter will identify with, sometimes the diet would last a few hours, sometimes a few days and occassionally a few weeks or months.
But inevitably I have gained back the weight each time.
The reason for this is because dieting is too hard.

There are a few different facets to my new approach which I will outline in this first post and elaborate on in future posts but today I want to give
you an insight into the main key to this approach

To lose weight you need to drop all the rules.

Why? Because it is the rules that are preventing us from losing weight and keeping it off.
As we know diets are all about rules.
You need to eat certain foods and avoid certain others.
The problem with this though is that it is just too hard and it is in our human nature to rebel against rules.
If something is too hard you will eventually stop doing it.
Also I've found that we focus so much on the rules of a diet that we cannot stop thinking about food.
Whereas when we are not on a diet we focus much less on food.
One of the alternative ways I tried to follow in the past is the premise of 'Eat what you want but only when you're hungry'
This makes a lot of sense except that this too is rule based so it failed for me.
What I've found is that any rule based strategy to lose weight will not work.
So I decided to drop all rules.
How does this work?

Say to yourself I can eat what I want, anything I want when and where I want.
This means eating when you are hungry or when you simply feel like it.
It also means not watching to stop yourself when you are full like the 'Eat only when you are hungry' approach
Many of you will immediately say 'That will not work for me'
'If I have no limits I will eat and eat'
Believe me I have found that this is not true.
So what I would suggest you do is try it for one day.
Say to yourself  'I will give this a try for one day. What do I have to lose'.
Every time that day you catch yourself setting yourself or trying to live by an eating rule, stop yourself and say 'There are no rules. I can eat whatever I want'
For me a few things happened when I started doing this.
I started to experience an amazing feeling of freedom around food.
I no longer experienced guilt when I ate something I considered bad.
I didn't feel the need to overeat as I would in the past when I was not on a diet.
Us yo-yo dieters know the way we eat when we are off our diet.
We overeat because we are planning our next diet tomorrow or the day after and this next diet will be the one that works.
I didn't over focus on food because I knew I could have any of it if I felt like it. And not just when I was hungry either because the truth is sometimes we want to eat when we're not hungry.
I started to enjoy my food so much more and began to realise that I was eating like a thin person does.
I did not consciously try to do this though and that's the key here.
I did try this approach before - I tried to eat like a thin person but again this failed because it had a rule 'Eat like a thin person' that went against my personal wants.

So there it is: your first step to implementing this new approach.

Eat what you want, anything you want when and where you want.

Just try it for one day.

 

There are some other discoveries I've made on my weight loss path also that I will blog about in the coming weeks.

These are:

· Tackle Emotional Eating

· Change Your Self Talk

· Overcome Self-Sabotage

But the main and most important premise of this new approach is the 'No Rules' strategy that I have just outlined.

As I said in the beginning I am on my first week of implementation myself.
I weighed 16st 4lbs on the 19th June and plan to weigh myself just once a week.
I will update on my progress here each Wednesday and share more about this approach.
 

Please feel free to leave your comments below.

 

Talk soon!!
Olivia

The Bailey Insight