1. Following the dictates of a diet rather than your internal cues like hunger and satisfaction require you to ignore natural instincts.
Hunger is a signal from your body’s intelligence center that it wants to eat and is prepared for the proper metabolism of food. Hunger is healthy; ignoring it is not commendable and may create a hypo-metabolic mode (in other words, a slower metabolism). This means that the majority of incoming calories are stored as as fat instead of burning them for energy. (From the “Metabolism” chapter of my book, The French Twist, Twelve Secrets of Decadent Dining and Natural Weight Management)
2. That which you resist persists.
Thank you very much, Isaac Newton, for your third law of motion, which describes the relationship between the forces acting on a body and that body’s motion. The simple truth is that the more you push something away, the more it comes back, now or later—in relation to eating, in the form of a craving for the very thing you’ve deprived yourself of. (From the “No Resistance” chapter of my book, The French Twist, Twelve Secrets of Decadent Dining and Natural Weight Management)
3. Dieting is the ultimate betrayal.
There is no more efficient way to lose touch with yourself and your body’s tastes, pleasures and preferences than to restrict your eating. Dieting is like putting your hand in a flame and thinking you won’t get burned. Trust me—you always get burned when you diet. You always lose touch with yourself. You always feel as though your nose is pressed against a window and those on the other side are living fully and enjoying what you are not. (From the “No Resistance” chapter of my book, The French Twist, Twelve Secrets of Decadent Dining and Natural Weight Management)
4. Restrictive dieting is not sustainable.
When you choose a diet over intuitive eating you opt for one of two likely outcomes.
Diet, lose the weight, and gain it back—plus some, or, diet, lose the weight, and spend the rest of your life in deprivation for fear of regaining the pounds.
