It’s the age-long method of losing weight, getting healthy, and loving your body. Right? Over the last few years, the truth behind the diet industry has begun to unravel. The lies within the industry are being uncovered as society moves away from traditional stances on the idea of dieting.
Well, to put it simply, we’ve been told for most of our grown lives that dieting is the route for the body and life that we want. We’ve been made to believe that dieting is the answer to all of our health prayers and the only way to be where we want to be weight-wise, we have to restrict ourselves through specific diets.
Have you heard of the Keto Diet? Intermittent Fasting? Juice Fasting? We’re not in the business of knocking anyone’s beliefs, but we are in the business of sharing and spreading the truth. And the truth is, the diet industry is a $60 billion industry, designed to keep you in a cycle of feeling stuck so you’re constantly running to the next fad diet to solve all your problems. A quick Google search will show you the evolution of the diet industry and how it’s been able to keep a tight hold on society.
There’s a truth behind the diet industry, one that they might not want you to know about, but that is the basis of what Hungry for Happiness stands for. I struggled for years with my own battles with food and body and it wasn’t until I was able to get and understand the whole truth that I was able to identify where the lies were hiding within the diet industry.
They hook you through deceptive marketing, making you believe that there is a one-size-fits-all method to the madness of being “healthy.” They target your vulnerabilities and weight loss insecurities as a way to profit. In other words, they are using your perceived weaknesses as a means to capitalize. Think about one thing that you’re self-conscious about regarding your body or lifestyle. THAT is their target. The fact that you always have to eat a specific food if it’s around, the fact that you’ve tried every diet with zero results, or the fact that you usually can see results in the beginning but they aren’t lasting. These are all insecurities that the diet industry can (and does) use against you in building their capital as a $60 billion industry.
When you start a new diet, you’re giving your power away to an industry that only cares about your failures. Here’s another truth: all diets were designed to make you fail. They wouldn’t create something that would actually help you in the long-term. Why? Because they would be losing your business. They would be losing your money. Now, I’m not knocking the medical field or anyone who seriously benefits from the pharmaceutical companies, but there is a truth behind this industry using people as their means of being in business – they are not in the business of healing people. Just like when the pharmaceutical companies prey on the sick, the truth behind the diet industry is just the same. In the eyes of the diet industry, weight loss is the drug and those who give in to the next fad diet are the users.
Noone is actually addressing the root of the problem in the health and wellness industry, except now. That’s why I built Hungry for Happiness. Our mission is to get deep to understand why we’re going something and learn about the ways that work for us, instead of against us. When you’re dieting, you’re restricting, and life isn’t about restricting yourself. Life is about responsibly enjoying the moments that you’re alive.
We saw the rise of body positivity over the last few years to combat the growing stigmas that started consuming the health and wellness industry. The problem is, body positivity is just another way of insisting on the opposite of what it originally set out to do. Our focus should be on health behaviors – what we do, not what we look like. Jumping on the “I love my body just the way it is” train won’t help anyone, and actually takes you further away from the healing that is needed to move forward with a healthy and happy life.
Let me explain this a bit further, in order to heal in any part of your life, you must first accept the parts of you that you hate. You have to be willing to look yourself in the mirror and accept that you hate your body so that you can take the necessary steps to step into a body that you love. You need to accept all parts of you, even the parts that are hard to accept. It’s your responsibility to see yourself clearly, instead of masking them with a false sense of comfort. Acceptance is the first step of the process, then comes the healing.
If dieting really worked, you’d only have to do it once. This is what the diet industry is designed to do. It grabs you with the continuous draw to try whatever new products are on the market, deterring your attention from what’s actually true. But if your goal is to grow and transform, then it’s time to get to the root of your issue. You get to create a new focus in your life that highlights health and wellness versus weight loss and diets.
We have genetic set points within our bodies and dieting messes with our metabolism and throws our bodies out of whack. When a person focuses on health, their bodies settle at their healthiest weight – which looks different for everyone. So the moral of the story? You can’t expect one-size-fits-all weight loss programs and the next fad diet on the market to solve your problems. The largest factor in determining how much you weigh is not how much you eat but your genetics. Many diets within the diet industry do not lead to a method of achieving sustained weight loss. Time after time they lead to preoccupation with food and weight, a toxic cultural thin ideal, body dissatisfaction, disordered eating, and at times life-threatening eating disorders.
Here’s the truth behind the diet industry, the diet mentality that they are feeding us just doesn’t work anymore (if it ever did). We can’t live in fear and restriction of what we eat. We are in charge of what we eat and why we eat it. Just like all things in life, we have to take responsibility in the way we approach health on an individual level because no one knows your body better than you do. The diet industry speaks about restriction and focuses on just appearance. Wellness is a lifestyle, and it’s about how you feel, and how you look is a result of how you feel.
And how you feel is based on your ability to self-heal your relationship with your food and body. That’s why we are creating the Food Freedom Journey. I’ll guide you on a journey of self-discovery to uncover the reasons you’re using food as a drug and show you how to overcome emotional eating – for good. The process is gentle and much softer than the intense crash diets you’re probably used to. If you want to learn more about it, head over to this link so that you're notified once enrollment for the program opens, and join an incredible community of women embarking on the journey too while you're at it.
