I Wish You Could See How Great You're Doing

It happens after Easter usually, after we’ve eaten our body weight in Cadbury’s chocolate and our main protein source has been the share bags of the humble mini egg, as the weather begins to (slightly) turn to bring (a tad) warmer mornings and daylight saving presents us with lighter evenings.
 
We begin to realise… summer is a few months away it’s time to diet.
 
There’s a huge uptick in social media searches and hashtags related to dieting in the spring, which is in part a result of this shift in body image we see across the year (seasonal body image), where we see peaks in body dissatisfaction in summer 
 
There are media pushes towards us dieting, pressure from friends and people on socials, and we know we’re going to be wearing slightly less clothes in the coming months. I for one have absolutely no idea how I’m going to be dressing when I can’t just wear my oversized fluffy jumper and ugly sweatpants every second of the day but that’s a me problem to solve and is more related to my lack of style than the warmer temperatures.
 
If you’re someone who struggles with weight loss, yo-yo dieting or constantly trying to be smaller, this is a time of year that I can almost see the cogs turning in your brain – when should I start dieting? If I start now, will that be enough time for that event in summer? How much do I need to get out the way now, before I diet hard into summer?
 
You know what I’m going to say here – there is no need to diet for summer you are already beach body ready. Lots of you would be more successful if you worked on your body image, as opposed to your body fat, to feel more confident by summer. 
 
That would look like daily practicing of body functionality awareness and appreciation, managing your body checking, noticing the relationship between your thoughts and your feelings of ‘fatness’, searching for beauty outside of your body, developing a more intuitive approach to you nutrition and strengthening your mind-body connection (just some of the tools we use at ETPHD)
 
However, lots of you do want to diet and you know I’m also going to say that it is totally ok to want to do so and for many of you, a pretty healthful choice to make. But you need to do things differently this year
 
Please do things differently
 
If you struggle with any sort of challenging relationship with food (overeating, over-restricting, under- or over- exercising, food preoccupation, food guilt, yo-yo dieting, binge eating etc.), you will be infinitely more successful in your body composition goals if you dedicate a month now to improving your relationship with food, then going into a calorie deficit
 
If you remove your disordered habits and go into a diet in a healthier headspace with food so you will enjoy your diet and do the thing you’ve never done before - keep the weight off at the end
 
What won’t work is getting all the easter chocolate out the house and committing to 8 weeks of no chocolate no ‘bad foods’ and ‘super dedication’ for a few months
 
I promise you it will not work 
 
You’ll find yourself after the summer event or holiday, having regained the weight, feeling guilty that you overate and giving yourself a few months to ‘do whatever’ before dieting into Christmas, only to repeat the cycle.
 
You’ll do this year or year until you decide that you’re bored of constantly chasing a smaller body and you’d rather find peace with a body (that is often smaller) that you can maintain year-round with great health and no stress with food
 
A large majority of you reading this will ignore what I’m saying because you don’t want to work on your relationship with food yet. You read my emails, you tick the boxes of ‘doing’ and that feels enough for you right now. That’s totally fine. At ETPHD we speak to lots of people who don’t want to do the full work yet and we don’t want to work with people who we have to convince to do it, that’s no fun for anyone.
 
If you’re honest with yourself and know how you want to feel in summer, that peace in your body, the comfort in a magnum by the beach without restriction, overeating or guilt (or ‘messing up’ your diet), then do something different. 
 
Apply to work with a fat loss coach that won’t f*ck up your relationship with food
 
Just please don’t do a summer shred, as much as I’d love to see you working with us afterwards so I can help you out of it, I’d rather you didn’t get that damage to your health, food and body in the first place
 
Side note - if you’re out of this cycle already and in a place of peace with food and your body, then absolutely props to you, I’m buzzing for you – everyone deserves that feeling
 
Have a wonderful Easter weekend,
I’m always here,
Em