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When the new year starts, so do a lot of new eating styles or diets. Whether you’ve decided to try Whole30, follow Melissa Joulwan’s Paleo tips, take inspiration from vegan Instagrams or give the macro diet a go, these changes in how and what you eat require both commitment and a fair amount of adjustment. Sometimes the new restrictions can seem too harsh — or even altogether impossible to follow — but you may feel guilty about giving up on your healthy mission. We checked in with a couple of dietitians to find out exactly how to know whether your new food plan is worth all the trouble. Here, they’ve given us four signs your diet isn’t working out.
You feel hungry or tired.
Tara Linitz, Nutrition Manager at EatLove, a service that helps people create healthy meal plans. “Any diet should include lean protein (e.g., fish, chicken or tofu), fiber (e.g., fruit, veg, beans, whole grains) and healthy fats (e.g., olive oil, nuts, avocado), all of which promote satiety,” she advises. While making adjustments and changes to your eating routine can be challenging (no one likes being told they can’t eat pizza all the time!), there’s no reason you should be feeling under the weather or crazy-hungry.
The only reason you’re on it is to lose weight.
research has shown that many people who diet end up gaining back not only the weight they lost, but more on top. It’s probably not worth eating in a way that makes you miserable just for the sake of dropping some pounds that will eventually rebound. It’s also worth mentioning that, as Tsui says, “When a diet fails, we blame ourselves for ‘not having enough willpower’ or ‘not following the diet properly.'” Our instinct is to accept the blame for a diet not working out, but in reality, that’s not often the case, especially when it comes to diets that are drastically different from how we normally eat.
