Sue Thomason has some enlightening words of advice for anyone who thinks that following Gillian McKeith's (or any other strict healthy eating regime) diet is in any way a.good.idea!
Question to Sue:
"I gave up dieting after 20 years of yo-yoing. I must have lost and gained tens of stones over the years and I ended up three stone heavier than the weight I was when I went on my first diet. I decided that I would eat healthily after watching Gillian McKeith’s programme. I liked the idea of eating any amount I liked but sticking to really nice healthy recipes, so I cut out greasy food, ready meals, and as much fat and sugar as I could. I upped my intake of fruit and vegetables to five a day and made sure I ate three big meals each day from a healthy eating recipe book.
The problem is that after an initial good start, the urge to eat crisps, sweets, chips and red meat is stronger than ever and I keep going into binge mode. Why is it so hard to stick to a healthy eating plan?"
Cheryl, 44, Doncaster.
"As the dieting statistics are slowly leaking out into the press and are much harder to ignore, dieting has sort of gone out of fashion and it’s being replaced with something that sounds much more sensible and easy – healthy eating.
"The problem is that dieting causes overeating directly and healthy eating is psychologically no different from a diet. This misunderstanding is creating a whole new group of people who could be described as ‘yo-yo healthy eaters’ as they all follow exactly the same pattern as they did while dieting but are brainwashed into being under the impression that what they’re doing is different. This, unfortunately, makes them feel even worse about themselves because they failed at dieting and now they’re failing at something else.
"These feelings of failure lower self-esteem, which perpetuates the overeating. The truth is, that it’s not your fault. Any kind of food restriction will drive you towards food and not away from it and you need to learn how to stop and have a complete turn around in your thinking about food. You need to stop following outside advice and get back in touch with your own needs.
"This is easier said than done. Fortunately, there are courses out there that will help you to do this. If you want to help yourself out of this pattern, the first step is to ask yourself where you can get some help that is different from the help you’ve been given so far – because that obviously isn’t working."
