May 26, 2024 • 13 mins
Thinking of starting a diet? Wondering whether it will be a success or just another failed attempt added to the list?
In today's episode, I'm taking a deep dive into popular diets, from keto to calorie-restricted plans, and uncovering some hard truths.
You'll learn why these diets might be more damaging than beneficial, often leading to binge eating and creating an unhealthy relationship with food.
Hang tight, because this is going to be an eye-opener.
Spoiler alert: You didn't fail these diets. They failed you.
If you want to learn how to build long-lasting healthy habits and also be a person who genuinely likes them self, my best-selling book Your Weight Is Not The Problem is a great place to start.
Want to ditch the diet culture for good? Get my Back to Basics app today - try it FREE for 7 days here. The customisable app helps you create a healthier relationship with food—no rigid rules or diet plans required!
Want to feel more in control around food? Check out my Stop Struggling With Food Guide, currently on sale for 40% off.
You’ll also find 50 of my favourite recipes to get you inspired!
Looking for more support to feel in control around food? I'd love to support you in my Binge Free Academy.
Come follow me on the gram at @nude_nutritionist (no nude pics, sorry).
Want to share some feedback or have an idea for an episode, I'd LOVE to hear from you - hit me up at hello@lyndicohen.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The silliest diet I ever did, oh, my goodness.
And I did a lot of silly diets,but I think the silliest was
the cabbage soup diet.
Maybe you've tried it hopefullynot, but if you did, you'd know
that on one day you'd eat milkand bananas and then the other
day you'd eat another weird foodcombination, and I remember my
mom had to drop off these foodsto me at school just because
(00:21):
they were so bizarre.
I mean, all diets suck, butsome, I think, are particularly
bad, which is what I want totalk about today, focusing on
the ones that I think are theworst and those diets that I
think are most likely to lead tobinge eating, feeling out of
control around food, and canreally mess with your
relationship with food in thelong term.
Now, if you struggle withconsistency, please avoid all
(00:44):
diets, but particularly I wantyou to be aware of these and
avoid these.
If you haven't listened to noWellness Weight Group before,
then welcome.
My name's Lindy Cohen.
I'm a dietician andnutritionist and I've helped
thousands and honestly, probablythousands of people feel normal
(01:05):
and relaxed around food.
This podcast is all aboutgiving you the science, the
information, the things youactually need because, oh my
goodness, you've been inundatedwith dodgy diet advice your
entire life, so much so thatit's really hard for you to now
know what in the world you areallowed to eat.
So this podcast is giving youall the right information,
(01:26):
speaking to experts who canreveal some really important
insights to change the way youthink about food.
Plus, you'll hear from me andreal people who are also going
through a relationship with foodtransformation, like you also
are Starting off strong with theketogenic diet, which is all
(01:48):
the craze at the moment.
Now, if you don't know whatthat is, this diet requires you
to have about 70 to 75% of yourenergy intake from fat so
exceptionally high fat.
20 to 25% protein and then only5 to 10% carbs, and the point
of this is for your body tostart using ketone bodies as
fuel instead of glucose fromcarbs.
(02:09):
Now, if you don't really knowthat 5% to 10% of carbs is
exceptionally low, it reallyjust allows space for things.
Like you know, there might besome naturally occurring
carbohydrate in something liketomatoes, and you're really
scraping the bottom of thebarrel when you're worrying
about the carbohydrates insomething like tomatoes, and
you're really scraping thebottom of the barrel when you're
worrying about thecarbohydrates in something like
tomatoes, which really tomatoesjust don't have that much carbs
(02:31):
anyway.
Now a state of ketosis.
It can take a few days to aweek to be able to get to, and
it can result in a whole bunchof very, very unpleasant
symptoms like feeling intensehunger, fatigue, nausea, bad
breath, brain fog and really badheadaches.
I know people who have triedthis.
They also report feeling likethey're really bad company
(02:53):
during these days andfundamentally, it's not
sustainable.
The thing I think is the mostsinister of all diets that are
negative are the ones that aregoing to tell you that entire
food groups are forbidden andbad.
Now majority of people end upbinge eating on
carbohydrate-based foods becausethese are the things we've been
told we need to cut out of ourdiet for our entire life, and
that's just not the case.
(03:14):
I do have another episode onthis very topic about why
carbohydrates do not need to becut out of your diet if you do
want to lose weight.
So go ahead and have a listento that episode if you want.
An interesting thing about theketogenic diet is that it was
originally developed to helpkids with epilepsy and it's only
now been adopted as a weightloss diet, and it's really
(03:36):
fascinating.
It's a brilliant diet.
It helps a lot of people whoneed it, but it is wildly hard
to maintain and stick to.
In fact, you can't actuallystay in a state of ketosis for
the rest of your life becauseit's incredibly unhealthy to do
so, and so I think what I reallydislike about the ketogenic
diet is how it limits so manyfoods and so many essential
(03:58):
nutrients.
It even limits things likevegetables and the amount you
can eat.
You certainly aren't evenallowed to have things like
fruit.
Now, anytime you get a dietthat's telling you you're not
allowed to have fruit andvegetables, I mean, come on, I
want alarm bells to go off inyour brain and, as I always say,
you have to ask yourself thequestion can I do this for the
rest of your life?
I could never stick to keto forthe rest of my life.
(04:22):
I think it promotes an obsessionwith counting grams of
carbohydrates per daymeticulously, because that's
what you need to do, and itdoesn't consider the full
nutritional benefit of food.
So like there's an emphasis onthings like cream and bacon and
cheese, and you know, as I said,the limit on vegetables and
fruit.
Sometimes, using a little bitof common sense, you go.
You know, I just don't think Icould live like that forever,
(04:45):
and that's the thing we need toalways consider, because if you
can't live on it forever, thenwhen you stop sticking to the
diet, what's going to happen tothe weight that you lost?
You will likely regain it, andstatistically we know people
will regain more weight thanthey did before ketogenic diet.
So, unless you want to gainweight, I would highly recommend
avoiding something like theketogenic diet, which is also
(05:08):
particularly hard to do if youare socializing, if you like,
seeing people and eating outlike most of us do.
Plus, there is increasingevidence that suggests it is
actually unsafe to follow in thelong term.
To stay in that state of ketosisis not sustainable.
It can reduce bone mineralcontent.
Now, if you're someone who hasosteoporosis in the family and a
(05:29):
quarter of Australian womenhave osteoporosis then I think
this is particularly interesting.
Plus, there might be someconcerns for your kidney
function, and that just makessense when you consider the
intense macronutrient imbalancethat you're creating on a diet
like this.
So the weight loss that youmight get on ketogenic diet is
not sustainable.
And now you've cut outcarbohydrates.
(05:51):
Once you do reintroduce theminto your diet.
You're probably going to bingeeat on them because you feel so
deprived, so please give keto amix.
I know maybe your neighborshe's just lost a lot of weight
doing the ketogenic diet, ormaybe your friend from gym has
done the same.
I just want you to breathe anddecide that it's nice to watch
(06:11):
what's happening for them, butmaybe in a year, two years from
now, I want you to be curiousabout what might happen to their
health and their body as aresult of doing something like
keto diet.
There's also the raw food diet,which is a bit of an oldie, but
it's still quite popular, and Ithink this is restrictive in its
very nature.
It says that you're onlyallowed to have foods that have
(06:31):
never been cooked, so noprocessed or no refined foods.
It claims that cooking destroysthe nutrients and the natural
enzymes that are found in food.
However, this is ridiculous,because cooking can often
actually increase the benefit ofour foods and it makes the
nutrients found in our food moreeasily absorbed by our bodies.
In fact, when you look at thehistory of humankind, when we
(06:53):
evolved to build fire and we canfinally start cooking food, the
life expectancy soared for ourpeople because suddenly we could
access so many more nutrients.
Babies survived much more.
We all just thrived as a people.
So that is absolute nonsensewhat this raw food diet does.
(07:14):
Because it restricts you so much, it often results in you not
eating enough calories, whichcan be very dangerous.
It can lead to nutrientdeficiencies and the disordered
eating habits that you know I'mtrying to stamp out.
It is extremely restrictive,and don't let anyone tell you
that it is not.
Plus, it's demonizing this ideathat processed foods are all
bad.
(07:34):
That's just not the case.
There are so many processedfoods in my pantry and in my
kitchen that actually makehealthy eating so much easier.
So, whether or not it'ssomething like tofu or milk, or
maybe it's something like tofuor milk, or maybe it's something
like some cheese, I love havingthese foods on hand and they
are easy to have and include inyour diet.
Plus, let's talk about the factthat it becomes really hard to
(07:57):
get enough things like, forexample, protein, because you
couldn't have something likecottage cheese, you can't have
normal cheese, you can't havetinned tuna, you can't have
normal cheese, you can't havetinned tuna, you can't have
cooked chicken.
All these things are notallowed, and so you end up
eating a very high fat diet.
You eat quite a bit of fruits.
Not that fruit's bad, but it'sjust an imbalance, and
(08:18):
imbalances are never good newsfor your health.
And I will finish with sayingthat the research agrees with me
.
It says, no, don't do the rawfood diet.
Well, what the research ispointing out is that we have
problems with bone density ofpeople who stick to diets like
this, and this could be becausecalcium is perhaps a bit more
hard to get I don't actuallyknow why and also people getting
(08:39):
menstrual irregularity, andthis could be because they're
not eating enough caloriesthroughout the day.
Now, leaning right onto this,another diet I really want you
to avoid is the low calorie diet, and that generally means
you're eating less than 1200calories a day, or even if it's
1500 calories a day, I want youto tell you that that is how
many calories a toddler needs.
That is not how many caloriesan adult needs to survive and
(09:03):
thrive.
What a low calorie diet does isit slows your metabolism and it
doesn't actually achievelong-term success.
I bet you've tried loads of lowcalorie diets and you know
better than anyone that they areunsustainable.
Sure, you may have lost weighton them in the past and you
think about anything like WeightWatchers or Jenny Craig and all
those kinds of those companies.
(09:24):
They use a low calorie dietformat to try and curb how much
you're eating and tends toresult in disordered eating.
When we are restricting ourcalories like that, it can cause
us to end up binge eating oremotional eating.
It may end up making theproblem so much worse than it
actually helps to fix it.
Now, what is the common themebetween all these diets?
(09:46):
Well, they're all restrictive,they're all cutting out entire
food groups or foods and,fundamentally, they're
unsustainable in the long term.
You could not answer thequestion can I stick to this for
the rest of my life?
You probably couldn't.
Now people sometimes ask mewhat about something like
intermittent fasting?
And I say if you really enjoysomething like that and you
think you could do it forever, Idon't have a problem with that.
(10:08):
My issue, my gripe, is withthese diets that are
fundamentally unsustainable andthat do not give you consistency
, and particularly the ones thatare actually messing with your
health and calling it wellbeingbecause you're losing weight.
Each time you go on a faileddiet attempt, your metabolism
will slow.
It'll change your hungerhormones, making an increase in
how hungry you feel, increasingcravings for the very foods that
(10:30):
you are trying to avoid.
Typically, we get that weightrebound as your body is fighting
back, saying I don't want tolose weight, I don't want to be
restricted.
Remember, your body loves beingin a state of homeostasis.
Now, if you're going, okay, cool.
Now what do I do, though?
A very good place to start isby reading my book.
Your Weight Is Not the Problem.
If you have not read it, pleasego ahead and read it.
(10:52):
I'll leave some details aboutit in the description so you can
go have a read or have a listen.
Now.
I hope today's episode hasgiven you a little bit of a
nudge not to go on whatever dietyou've been mulling about doing
and keep asking yourself thatquestion Can I do this for the
rest of your life?
Because health and well-being,especially for you, should be
(11:15):
sustainable, enjoyable, and Ithink that's a recipe for
well-being.
Bye.
The silliest diet I ever did, oh, my goodness.
And I did a lot of silly diets,but I think the silliest was
the cabbage soup diet.
Maybe you've tried it hopefullynot, but if you did, you'd know
that on one day you'd eat milkand bananas and then the other
day you'd eat another weird foodcombination, and I remember my
mom had to drop off these foodsto me at school just because
(00:21):
they were so bizarre.
I mean, all diets suck, butsome, I think, are particularly
bad, which is what I want totalk about today, focusing on
the ones that I think are theworst and those diets that I
think are most likely to lead tobinge eating, feeling out of
control around food, and canreally mess with your
relationship with food in thelong term.
Now, if you struggle withconsistency, please avoid all
(00:44):
diets, but particularly I wantyou to be aware of these and
avoid these.
If you haven't listened to noWellness Weight Group before,
then welcome.
My name's Lindy Cohen.
I'm a dietician andnutritionist and I've helped
thousands and honestly, probablythousands of people feel normal
(01:05):
and relaxed around food.
This podcast is all aboutgiving you the science, the
information, the things youactually need because, oh my
goodness, you've been inundatedwith dodgy diet advice your
entire life, so much so thatit's really hard for you to now
know what in the world you areallowed to eat.
So this podcast is giving youall the right information,
(01:26):
speaking to experts who canreveal some really important
insights to change the way youthink about food.
Plus, you'll hear from me andreal people who are also going
through a relationship with foodtransformation, like you also
are Starting off strong with theketogenic diet, which is all
(01:48):
the craze at the moment.
Now, if you don't know whatthat is, this diet requires you
to have about 70 to 75% of yourenergy intake from fat so
exceptionally high fat.
20 to 25% protein and then only5 to 10% carbs, and the point
of this is for your body tostart using ketone bodies as
fuel instead of glucose fromcarbs.
(02:09):
Now, if you don't really knowthat 5% to 10% of carbs is
exceptionally low, it reallyjust allows space for things.
Like you know, there might besome naturally occurring
carbohydrate in something liketomatoes, and you're really
scraping the bottom of thebarrel when you're worrying
about the carbohydrates insomething like tomatoes, and
you're really scraping thebottom of the barrel when you're
worrying about thecarbohydrates in something like
tomatoes, which really tomatoesjust don't have that much carbs
(02:31):
anyway.
Now a state of ketosis.
It can take a few days to aweek to be able to get to, and
it can result in a whole bunchof very, very unpleasant
symptoms like feeling intensehunger, fatigue, nausea, bad
breath, brain fog and really badheadaches.
I know people who have triedthis.
They also report feeling likethey're really bad company
(02:53):
during these days andfundamentally, it's not
sustainable.
The thing I think is the mostsinister of all diets that are
negative are the ones that aregoing to tell you that entire
food groups are forbidden andbad.
Now majority of people end upbinge eating on
carbohydrate-based foods becausethese are the things we've been
told we need to cut out of ourdiet for our entire life, and
that's just not the case.
(03:14):
I do have another episode onthis very topic about why
carbohydrates do not need to becut out of your diet if you do
want to lose weight.
So go ahead and have a listento that episode if you want.
An interesting thing about theketogenic diet is that it was
originally developed to helpkids with epilepsy and it's only
now been adopted as a weightloss diet, and it's really
(03:36):
fascinating.
It's a brilliant diet.
It helps a lot of people whoneed it, but it is wildly hard
to maintain and stick to.
In fact, you can't actuallystay in a state of ketosis for
the rest of your life becauseit's incredibly unhealthy to do
so, and so I think what I reallydislike about the ketogenic
diet is how it limits so manyfoods and so many essential
(03:58):
nutrients.
It even limits things likevegetables and the amount you
can eat.
You certainly aren't evenallowed to have things like
fruit.
Now, anytime you get a dietthat's telling you you're not
allowed to have fruit andvegetables, I mean, come on, I
want alarm bells to go off inyour brain and, as I always say,
you have to ask yourself thequestion can I do this for the
rest of your life?
I could never stick to keto forthe rest of my life.
(04:22):
I think it promotes an obsessionwith counting grams of
carbohydrates per daymeticulously, because that's
what you need to do, and itdoesn't consider the full
nutritional benefit of food.
So like there's an emphasis onthings like cream and bacon and
cheese, and you know, as I said,the limit on vegetables and
fruit.
Sometimes, using a little bitof common sense, you go.
You know, I just don't think Icould live like that forever,
(04:45):
and that's the thing we need toalways consider, because if you
can't live on it forever, thenwhen you stop sticking to the
diet, what's going to happen tothe weight that you lost?
You will likely regain it, andstatistically we know people
will regain more weight thanthey did before ketogenic diet.
So, unless you want to gainweight, I would highly recommend
avoiding something like theketogenic diet, which is also
(05:08):
particularly hard to do if youare socializing, if you like,
seeing people and eating outlike most of us do.
Plus, there is increasingevidence that suggests it is
actually unsafe to follow in thelong term.
To stay in that state of ketosisis not sustainable.
It can reduce bone mineralcontent.
Now, if you're someone who hasosteoporosis in the family and a
(05:29):
quarter of Australian womenhave osteoporosis then I think
this is particularly interesting.
Plus, there might be someconcerns for your kidney
function, and that just makessense when you consider the
intense macronutrient imbalancethat you're creating on a diet
like this.
So the weight loss that youmight get on ketogenic diet is
not sustainable.
And now you've cut outcarbohydrates.
(05:51):
Once you do reintroduce theminto your diet.
You're probably going to bingeeat on them because you feel so
deprived, so please give keto amix.
I know maybe your neighborshe's just lost a lot of weight
doing the ketogenic diet, ormaybe your friend from gym has
done the same.
I just want you to breathe anddecide that it's nice to watch
(06:11):
what's happening for them, butmaybe in a year, two years from
now, I want you to be curiousabout what might happen to their
health and their body as aresult of doing something like
keto diet.
There's also the raw food diet,which is a bit of an oldie, but
it's still quite popular, and Ithink this is restrictive in its
very nature.
It says that you're onlyallowed to have foods that have
(06:31):
never been cooked, so noprocessed or no refined foods.
It claims that cooking destroysthe nutrients and the natural
enzymes that are found in food.
However, this is ridiculous,because cooking can often
actually increase the benefit ofour foods and it makes the
nutrients found in our food moreeasily absorbed by our bodies.
In fact, when you look at thehistory of humankind, when we
(06:53):
evolved to build fire and we canfinally start cooking food, the
life expectancy soared for ourpeople because suddenly we could
access so many more nutrients.
Babies survived much more.
We all just thrived as a people.
So that is absolute nonsensewhat this raw food diet does.
(07:14):
Because it restricts you so much, it often results in you not
eating enough calories, whichcan be very dangerous.
It can lead to nutrientdeficiencies and the disordered
eating habits that you know I'mtrying to stamp out.
It is extremely restrictive,and don't let anyone tell you
that it is not.
Plus, it's demonizing this ideathat processed foods are all
bad.
(07:34):
That's just not the case.
There are so many processedfoods in my pantry and in my
kitchen that actually makehealthy eating so much easier.
So, whether or not it'ssomething like tofu or milk, or
maybe it's something like tofuor milk, or maybe it's something
like some cheese, I love havingthese foods on hand and they
are easy to have and include inyour diet.
Plus, let's talk about the factthat it becomes really hard to
(07:57):
get enough things like, forexample, protein, because you
couldn't have something likecottage cheese, you can't have
normal cheese, you can't havetinned tuna, you can't have
normal cheese, you can't havetinned tuna, you can't have
cooked chicken.
All these things are notallowed, and so you end up
eating a very high fat diet.
You eat quite a bit of fruits.
Not that fruit's bad, but it'sjust an imbalance, and
(08:18):
imbalances are never good newsfor your health.
And I will finish with sayingthat the research agrees with me
.
It says, no, don't do the rawfood diet.
Well, what the research ispointing out is that we have
problems with bone density ofpeople who stick to diets like
this, and this could be becausecalcium is perhaps a bit more
hard to get I don't actuallyknow why and also people getting
(08:39):
menstrual irregularity, andthis could be because they're
not eating enough caloriesthroughout the day.
Now, leaning right onto this,another diet I really want you
to avoid is the low calorie diet, and that generally means
you're eating less than 1200calories a day, or even if it's
1500 calories a day, I want youto tell you that that is how
many calories a toddler needs.
That is not how many caloriesan adult needs to survive and
(09:03):
thrive.
What a low calorie diet does isit slows your metabolism and it
doesn't actually achievelong-term success.
I bet you've tried loads of lowcalorie diets and you know
better than anyone that they areunsustainable.
Sure, you may have lost weighton them in the past and you
think about anything like WeightWatchers or Jenny Craig and all
those kinds of those companies.
(09:24):
They use a low calorie dietformat to try and curb how much
you're eating and tends toresult in disordered eating.
When we are restricting ourcalories like that, it can cause
us to end up binge eating oremotional eating.
It may end up making theproblem so much worse than it
actually helps to fix it.
Now, what is the common themebetween all these diets?
(09:46):
Well, they're all restrictive,they're all cutting out entire
food groups or foods and,fundamentally, they're
unsustainable in the long term.
You could not answer thequestion can I stick to this for
the rest of my life?
You probably couldn't.
Now people sometimes ask mewhat about something like
intermittent fasting?
And I say if you really enjoysomething like that and you
think you could do it forever, Idon't have a problem with that.
(10:08):
My issue, my gripe, is withthese diets that are
fundamentally unsustainable andthat do not give you consistency
, and particularly the ones thatare actually messing with your
health and calling it wellbeingbecause you're losing weight.
Each time you go on a faileddiet attempt, your metabolism
will slow.
It'll change your hungerhormones, making an increase in
how hungry you feel, increasingcravings for the very foods that
(10:30):
you are trying to avoid.
Typically, we get that weightrebound as your body is fighting
back, saying I don't want tolose weight, I don't want to be
restricted.
Remember, your body loves beingin a state of homeostasis.
Now, if you're going, okay, cool.
Now what do I do, though?
A very good place to start isby reading my book.
Your Weight Is Not the Problem.
If you have not read it, pleasego ahead and read it.
(10:52):
I'll leave some details aboutit in the description so you can
go have a read or have a listen.
Now.
I hope today's episode hasgiven you a little bit of a
nudge not to go on whatever dietyou've been mulling about doing
and keep asking yourself thatquestion Can I do this for the
rest of your life?
Because health and well-being,especially for you, should be
(11:15):
sustainable, enjoyable, and Ithink that's a recipe for
well-being.
Bye.
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