Why Can’t I Stick To My Diet?

Dieting was never something I was good at. The idea was always the same: lose the weight and then naturally become a “normal” eater. As if weight loss itself would fix my relationship with food. What I couldn’t see back then was that chasing weight loss was the very thing harming my mental health around eating.

While I struggled with disordered eating, there was many times I managed to lose a noticeable amount of weight. If I could just force myself to repeat it. I told myself there was no excuse: I’d done it once, so I should be able to do it again.

But I couldn’t. Those past moments of dieting “success” can make us particularly prone to blaming ourselves. We convince ourselves we should be able to repeat it—we’ve done it before, after all—so it’s hard for our minds to accept that it no longer feels possible.

In the beginning our primal brains are more compassionate. When we experience our first diet our brains have not experienced restrictions, it doesn’t react. However, once we enter the cycle of dieting and controlling of food, the brain now is sensitive. It now knows what restriction is or if there is an upcoming threat of restriction.

When the number on the scale reflects our weight loss, chemicals are released in our brain that pushes us to achieve more. Weight loss can feel amazing, especially when others say how good we look. However, with experience we know its short lived, the weight loss eventually slows down, stops or we gain it back. Eventually the reward hub in our brains fail to get those signs and we start to crave food. Its at this point, we feel out of control, huge amounts of food are consumed and the dynamic changes.  

This is not about willpower, its not about weakness, and that’s why its so hard to stick to our diet.