Plant-Strong Success Tip #10: Give Up the Diet Mentality

What would be different in your life if you were able to maintain a healthy weight relatively easily?

What is the one thing stopping you from achieving your happy weight and ultimate health?

Adopting a Plant-Strong way of nourishing yourself is what I like to call "The Real Deal." Why? Because you really can achieve your happy weight and stay there with little or no fuss, after you have mastered all of the basics.

This series, "Healthy Girl's Top Ten Tips for Plant-Strong Success" is aimed at making this way of eating effortless and sustainable. You don't have to follow all of my tips, just the ones that speak to you. If all of my tips resonate with you, also recognize that you certainly don't have to do them all at once. This is a process of change and real, lasting change comes from making small changes over a long period of time.

Please remember that when I gave this talk, I was addressing a group of adults who are participating in a 21 Day Vegan Weight Loss kickstart program organized by Whole Foods. So, as you read my first Tip in this series, keep in mind that this tip may no longer apply to you, my precious reader, as many of you are 100% Plant-Strong committed!

Plant-Strong Success Tip #10: Give Up the Diet Mentality

I'm going to be very blunt. If there is a part of you that is here right now thinking, "I will do this Plant-Strong 'diet' for as long as it takes me to lose my excess weight and then I will go back to eating the same as I always have," I am here to tell you that you need to give up your "I'm on a diet/I'm not on a diet" mentality RIGHT NOW.

People who maintain a healthy weight with ease do not go on and off of diets endlessly. They maintain their weight with relative uneventfulness and without yo-yo dieting. The miracle of becoming Plant-Strong is that you can end the horrible yo-yo dieting forever once you make the commitment.

I am not here to scold anyone about the pain of yo-yo dieting. I was there myself for far too many years and I know how deep your pain is. I am here to make one point about eating, and one point only:

YOU CAN AND WILL GET TO A PLACE WHERE YOU CAN SEE YOURSELF EATING THIS WAY FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.

Why does this matter?

First, anything that is a continuous struggle for you is going to be unmaintainable over the long haul. A weight loss "diet" in the conventional sense, sets you up for disaster. You restrict your calories for months on end, all the while losing weight and feeling insanely hungry. By the time you reach your breaking point (and you may or may not have reached your goal weight also), you are so ravenous that you will binge on anything and everything within 100 yards of your mouth.

I do not mean to poke fun of Oprah. I love Oprah!

These photos merely represent

that diets do not work.

Contrast this scenario with becoming Plant-Strong. You are filling yourself up every day, three times a day, with uber-nutritious meals. You are satisfactorily full three times a day. You don't even realize it, but you are consuming far fewer calories than you were prior to becoming Plant-Strong. The weight is coming off and you never even get ravenously hungry. Now that is something that you can stick with for the rest of your life. And you don't ever feel like you are "on a diet."

What does this look like?

• You enjoy the food that you are eating enormously.
• You fill yourself up and never get ravenous (this doesn't mean you don't get hungry, but more on that in a later tip).
• Your fixation on what you are going to eat and when comes to an end. You are free from your food compulsion!
• The way you eat, think and feel about food has changed. Food and nutrition are no longer scary or a mystery. You know how to nourish yourself completely without gaining weight.
• You would never, ever think of going back to your old way of eating. That would be ridiculous! 

Are you new to Plant-Strong as a way of eating?

Have you thought to yourself, "I'll do this until I lose my excess weight and then I'll stop?" 

Or have you found your happy place with food and cannot see yourself eating any other way but Plant-strong?