What do you think of this article?
For a long time, I wanted to be in the “Diets don’t work” club. I love the idea of telling everyone that I will never diet again – but I quickly learned that meant being fat forever.
Hala El-Shafie says: Diets set you up to fail; they should be banned. Eat small amounts of the right food. Eat regularly and well. Get moving: exercise helps. Think about why you eat. Accept your body shape and who you are; size 8 (4 US) jeans will not necessarily make you happy.
Yes! But,where I come from, if you’re used to eating whatever, whenever and however much you want, Ms El-Shafie’s approach to not dieting IS dieting. There are about a thousand steps between where I started and where she wants me to be. I’ve been working at this for years and I’m not there yet.
For me this is a “just do this” statement and about as helpful as responding to malfunctioning light switches with, “just rewire the house”.
In my experience, “just do this” statements are used by people who don’t want to share your problem with you. They offer solutions that reflect well on their own behaviour – “Well I could rewire my own house!”. Well bully for you – as my mother would say.
Instead, I favour the “acknowledge how messy life is” response.
- Start with figuring out the problem – it might take some time.
- Then think of little tiny things that are going to help you climb out of the muck and mire.
- Finally – keep trying and making mistakes and falling down and getting dirty and asking friends to help you up. Suddenly you find that things are going generally in the right direction.
There’s no timetable – this might take years or just a few months. I can’t imagine it taking less than a few months. Just be prepared for stretches of hard work and results to be followed by cruising and consolidation as you regroup or just enjoy your success so far.
And while you’re doing all this figuring out, it will probably help to have some tools on hand that other people have devised – maybe Weight Watchers or Nutracheck or a Low GI diet (I’ve never tried that one but it always seemed sensible). As long as we treat them as tools and not religions, they can be helpful rather than harmful.
I’ve also got a collection of books that I dip into when I need encouragement or sometimes I just read through blogs of people who are also figure this food/body/mind thing out.
How do we asses whether or not it’s working? I think the only way is to think back to the beginning of the process.
- Am I further ahead than I was 30 years ago. Yes – by many many many steps.
- What about 2 years ago? I’ve learned SO much about myself in this process since I started dropping down from 170lbs.
- What about last month? No- I haven’t made much progress for a couple of months. I guess it’s time to push forward again.
What does “push forward” mean in this part of the journey? It means getting the last few pounds off and starting the “forever” process with maintenance. Can’t say I feel particularly psyched. My stomach bothers me every day and I find myself eating what I think will make me feel better. I need to be more mindful about what does make me feel better and construct a plan around that.
OK – This life has huge capacity for “Day 1′s” and this is yet another of them. Losing another half stone (7lbs) can’t make my health worse and it just might make it a bit better. So here goes.
This is a wonderful post. One sentence really struck home to me: “if you’re used to eating whatever, whenever and however much you want, Ms El-Shafie’s approach to not dieting IS dieting.”
I can’t count the number of times I’d find a diet where “Step One” was to take someone’s “regular” menu that added up to, say, 2500 calories and, with just a few simple changes (switching skim for full fat milk, cutting out the banana split and substituting a 1/4 cup cottage cheese, etc.) you’d be down to 1200 calories and halfway to nirvana. But I didn’t have a typical menu. I didn’t eat three meals a day. That approach would have worked for me in high school, but not now.
I’ve been doing this very slowly. I lost 36 pounds over a 15-month period, ending last year about a year ago. I’ve lost only 2 pounds since. BUT I had a very stressful, challenging year and I did not regain, nor did I “slip back” into the old bad habits I’d been able to break. I count that as a victory, and — finally — have realized that that’s the map to winning the war. It’s guerrilla warfare, picking off the snipers and clearing out each little band of saboteurs until there are none left, and then I’ll be ready to sit down and have a cup of coffee (no cream, no sugar) with Ms El-Shafie.
I’d say we’ve found another kindred spirit……Please keep the comments coming.
And well done on the loss and especially on keeping it off. I’ll be following your progress over at your blog. (note to self: add link)
Thanks! I just read on another blog that one is supposed to ask before adding links — I didn’t know that. I’d put a link to your blog on mine (I hope that’s ok, but if not, let me know and I’ll take it down). I thought of using the blog as a kind of home page/control panel with links to sites I’d like to read. Then I linked to 3fc and wordpress shut me down for making a commercial post. Yikes! (They relented, but I’m now afraid to link to anything.)
I think we are kindred spirits. I do believe that there are some things that one can figure out, lessons to be learned, mistakes not to be repeated. And I do this in the hope that, once that work is done (and, in my case, a long bout of retraining to get me back to where you are now), then it will be possible to live a normal life. Won’t it? Otherwise, it will be losing, gaining, losing, gaining, and making those cute little charts AND feeling horribly guilty because one is supposed to lose 2 pounds a week. Or so they say.
I didn’t know about asking permission; I’m a rookie too. Link away.
As much as I agree with the fact that losing weight is an incredibly long and hard process for many of us, I think you are taking what Hala El-Shafie has said out of context. Portion size is one of the biggest problems in people who are overweight – when I was trying to lose weight I cut down my portion sizes and realised that as much as I wanted a big plate of food when I was hungry, the smaller portion was more than sufficient. That in itself is a psychological issue – thinking you need/want more than you do. That was one of the biggest realisations I had when losing weight. Also – what Ms El-Shafie has stated is not characteristic of a ‘diet’ – because many diets require you to cut out food groups, which is the problem with diets as your cravings make you break them.
You have taken a very small passage of text out of an article – this hardly illustrates the extent of Hala El-Shafie’s clinical technique or viewpoints. I used to be one of Hala’s clients and what makes her so amazing as a nutritionist and dietician is the fact that she looks at not only your eating behviour, but also your sleep and mood behaviour – and tries to target the psychological issues underlying your eating. It is so much more than just saying “eat less” but it’s very hard to demonstrate that in a small article.
You give credit to diets such as Weight Watchers – but that has exactly the same ethos as what Hala El-Shafie said: eat a range of food and have treats, but have smaller portions – hence why you have to weigh out specific amounts of food!
I really appreciate how hard losing weight is and I too get very irritated by those who just say “don’t eat” and don’t take into consideration your lifestyle or feelings – but I really don’t think this is what was done in this article.
Thanks for your thoughts Jennifer. I really do agree with all those principles and it’s likely that Hala El-Shafie and I probably agree on almost everything to do with food. I simply feel it’s not helpful to say “don’t diet” because it’s become another bandwagon that causes divisions between people who probably should be working together.
Maybe it’s the “don’t” word that got me.
And I’m not a great fan of WW. I’m very very cynical about the corporate stuff and wouldn’t touch their food for anything. But it’s not a bad place to start if you can’t afford specialist help and want to begin the journey to a saner relationship with food and body. I’d certainly recommend it over any other meeting based programme.
Anyway- I’m very happy for you to set the record straight and I hope that someone gets the help they need because you bothered. I’d be interested to know more about what Hala El-Shafie offers. Has she written anything that’s available to those of us who live a long long way from Harley Street? Thanks!
Thank you – I really appreciate your comments.
If you go to the website of her practice -theharleynutritionclinic- there is more press on there. Also – something you might be interested in – Hala is actually launching a website in a few weeks called “Nutrition Rocks” http://www.nutrition-rocks.co.uk/ which will be trying to ignite people’s passion for health, fitness and good food – trying to get people to improve their attitude towards food and eating and also improve body image and self-esteem. So there will be lots of content on there if you are interested in reading more about it all. Have a great day.
I’ve blogged further on this: http://www.talkingitoff.com/2010/05/25/wow-i-feel-used/