Why Eating Less Isn’t Working

At this point you might not understand why eating less isn’t working for you but that seems to be the only advice out there to help you lose weight.

I’m going to give you a different perspective on what I call the myth of eating less. This tiny statement has created so much damage for women who have been led to believe that it is their appetite that is the problem.

Have you recently been searching for help with an issue that also includes weight gain and been frustrated by the search results that just say something along the lines of “eat less?”

For decades, women have been told the secret to weight loss is simple: just eat less. But this so-called “truth” hasn’t helped us.

Instead, it’s left generations of women stuck in cycles of restriction, guilt, and confusion: struggling with food, battling body image issues, and still carrying more weight than they want.

It’s time to question why we keep following advice that doesn’t work and start looking at what truly helps us feel better in our bodies.

The Myth of Eating Less

Women typically believe that they need to eat less. We’ve heard that since we were teenagers. And we’re still being told this by medical professionals and most of the articles online when we search for help.

Eat less, eat less, eat less, was the constant message for most of us. And if you felt like you were already over-sized the message was even louder. We were punished for having an appetite and eating food we liked.

When I was a teenager, I believed the magazines like Teen and Seventeen that were full of waif-like models who promoted extreme thinness.

Because my very normal and healthy body was not a smaller size, I always felt like I was doing it wrong. I kid you not. Looking back, I would be considered thin now, but back then I felt huge.

I know the pain of spending your days trying to figure out how to eat less so you can finally have a body that society will approve of.

We have so much collective pain over hating our bodies because we are still trying to live up to the ideal of what we thought we were supposed to look like as a teenager.

The myth is that if only we could control our appetites, we could control our bodies, and we’d finally feel okay.

Yet, even after decades we still hold on to that myth and continue to punish ourselves physically and emotionally because our bodies actually do get hungry and we really do need to eat.

I’ve begun describing the work I do as teaching women to eat like you love yourself. I’m not telling you to give up on having a healthy body. I’m just saying it’s time to eat as if you are a person you truly loved and wanted the best for.

Eating less is not the entire answer. Our bodies are way more complex than that. Sometimes you will need to eat more. Sometimes you’ll need to eat differently. But I can almost guarantee you that you don’t need to just eat less.

Why Eating Less Doesn’t Work

When it comes to food and eating, we have a lot of thoughts and feelings. Once upon a time, getting food was almost a full time job. We ate for survival. Up until the last couple of generations, food scarcity was a thing for many people.

My mom grew up in a house that often had food scarcity. There was always something, but a meal could be as little as some toast the school sent home with her mom.

But in the 80+ years since my mom had toast and cocoa for dinner, the world of food has exploded. In her childhood a grocery store might have hundreds of items. These days, depending on the size of the store it can be in the tens of thousands.

Add to that, all the restaurants and fast-food places that sprung up.

But first I’ve got to explain that part of the problem is that what you think you should be doing, just isn’t the right thing.

Forget about survival, most of us are trying to figure out how to avoid eating all the tasty and crave-inducing foods there are. We fight an internal battle every day between what we want to eat and what we should eat.

What Eating Less Looks Like

For the most part, women have been led to believe that they need to eat less at meals. Every diet I was ever on, had portion sizes, that in no way, every satisfied me. It was always either too little food or food I didn’t really enjoy.

I can remember being hungry in a way that felt painful and always wanting more food.

Then there would be overeating and binging to compensate. Not eating enough at meals is a problem not a solution.

What I see by the time clients find me are women who restrict their food intake at meals and overeat or binge at other times. They come to me, hoping that I can help them finally conquer their appetites.

Yes, women believe their appetites and their lack of willpower are the problem and that there is something wrong with them.

Being hungry is seen a fault and women who somehow transcend their hunger are held up as role models for the rest of us.

The problem is painted as if there is something wrong with us rather than we’ve been taught the wrong things.

What Do You Do Instead of Eating Less?

Instead, I teach women how to work with their appetites in a new way. While eating less may cause you to lose weight, you will be in a constant battle with your appetite and hunger. It doesn’t ever feel good.

Plus the eating less isn’t necessarily healthier and for some women even that doesn’t even work after a certain age.

Instead of eating less, you most likely need to eat differently. Your appetite and hunger are a part of you. Your fat is a survival mechanism in your body. You can’t beat them into submission and feel good.

However, you can change how you eat and feel better for doing it. Eating doesn’t have to feel complicated like a crazy puzzle that you can’t figure out.

Forget that nonsense that eating healthy has to be about eating foods you don’t like and eating those foods in tiny quantities. The only thing that will work long-term is eating foods you like and eating enough that you feel good.

The Shift in How We Eat

The surprise for most of my clients is that they need to eat more at their meals. They need to eat more real food. They need to spend more time planning and preparing food. They need to intentionally eat food they like. They need to abandon the idea of needing to eat less.

As you can imagine, this doesn’t happen overnight. And most women are not happy to hear that. Most women want to do less, not more. Not because they are lazy but because they are already doing so much. So, adding meal planning, prep, and time to eat can feel overwhelming.

The solution is not to abandon eating like you love yourself; the solution is to do less in other areas so you have time to take care of yourself.

If that sounds bad, I get that. We see ourselves as indispensable in other areas of our lives, while at the same time abandoning our care of ourselves. This calls for a big shift in your mindset. You must put yourself first. To undo decades of body damage, it really requires a lot of focus on yourself to change.

In my practice, most of my clients are doing too much for other people. They live with partners, but they do almost all the house care, meals, and planning. They prioritize their grown children’s needs over their own needs. And at work, they do their own job plus way more.

So, the goal of eating like you love yourself, requires you to love yourself in such a way as you prioritize your own well-being and self-care.

What Does Eating More Look Like?

The first and most amazing thing happens when you begin eating more at meals. By eating more at meals and eliminating the overeating and binging at other times, you stop gaining weight.

That’s always motivating and surprising to my clients. “Wow, I’m eating good meals and I’m not gaining weight.”

We start by having the client track all her food. Most women under eat at meals and overeat with snacks.

When I first start working with a client, I recommend that they end all snacking as a goal. It can take a few weeks for this to happen. However even before eliminating snacking, I challenge women eat more at their meals.

Snacking can easily double the amount of food we eat in a day without leaving us feeling satisfied. It can seem like we’re always looking for the next thing to eat. And we are!

Yet, when we commit to eating enough food at our meals to feel satisfied, it is much easier to snack less. For most of us, our bodies do better when we feed them enough at meals to go many hours until the next time we eat.

When we eat a meal that fills us up; we generally feel good. Then as the hours go by, our body will gradually become hungry again.

This hunger feels good and is a signal that we’ll need to eat soon but it doesn’t feel like an emergency.

Doing this will usually stop weight gain. We can easily maintain our weight, when we eat meals and don’t snack. This is actually very freeing because we worry less about eating or food in general. We begin to understand and feel the natural rhythms of our hunger and our body.

Here are a couple of posts that can walk you through how to do that and ideas for adjusting how you eat so you can lose weight.

10 Powerful Tips to Lose Weight

7 Tips to Lose Weight After 50