Getting Started: Ditch Diets

If you are a Christian looking to ditch diets and glorify God in your eating, I have great tips for you!  Your faith provides you with the very tools and truths you need to learn how to ditch diets and find food freedom in Jesus so that you can start living, be healthy, and go do great(er) things for God!

It’s a weird thing, diets. “They” don’t work and they make “us” miserable but– then “we” feel like the failure. And, because we believe our lack of success was our fault, we try again. Only to prove once again that “we were never meant to reach our goals”.

Diets are exhausting and, most often, they leave us worse than we started.

In this Getting Started section, you will find the best resources to help you Ditch Diets as well as an introduction to how I view dieting here at Grace Filled Plate.

Why We Diet in the First Place

Think about why you started your first diet. While the answer floating on the surface may seem pretty obvious (you wanted to lose weight), what lies beneath may reveal a lot.

Maybe you were seeking better health, increased fitness, a feeling of accomplishment, more joy, or greater confidence.
Maybe you thought losing weight would help you excel in life and lead you to a better job or a future spouse.

Whatever your why was, it’s something that was really important to you. After all, you were willing to do a lot to get there.

Knowing our WHY will help us evaluate the true intent and productivity of the diet— Did it deliver all you had hoped?

Yeah, I thought not…

How Well Do Diets Work?

So, how effective was that diet at helping you achieve the goals you identified above? Your answer may not be cut and dry and that’s ok. It’s complicated, I get it.

But, for the purpose of this exercise try to keep it simple: Overall, what areas of your life did the diet make better or worse?

In my life, each ensuing diet left me with less self-control and more self-hate. Yes, I did lose weight throughout my journey, but the pain of gaining it back far outweighed the spurts of excitement that came with the loss.

How happy can one be when starving and obsessed, after all? That was me–> starved and obsessed.

We “Fail” and we try again.

The dieting industry is unique in that it boasts a measly 5% success rate. Think about that– 5%!

Imagine if any other industry had a 95% failure rate. There is NO way they would still be in business.

And yet, billions of people flock to its doors each year. As a nation, we pour more money into diets than any other country in the world and yet we top the charts in obesity and obesity-related diseases.

But, when we fall off the dieting bandwagon one more time, we blame ourselves and then we go buy another one. We really are duped!

Are you ready to ditch diets and glorify God in your eating (1 Corinthians 10:31)?

What Works

Thankfully there is another way! I will be the first to tell you that Grace Filled Plate is NOT about a quick fix. To find freedom AND health AND happiness, you are going to need to do some work.

I won’t be sharing meal plans that promise fat loss, but I will be telling you about how to listen to your body, discipline your mind, and feed your spirit so that you can reach those goals that led you to a diet in the first place.

Freedom to Be Disciplined

When it comes to diet and exercise, freedom and discipline may seem contradictory, but here, they are complimentary.

At Grace Filled Plate, you will see numerous posts discussing your freedom to eat “whatever you want” followed by recipes for healthier alternatives. This may be confusing if you do not understand where these recommendations are coming from.

In short, as you follow along here you will learn how to marry your freedom to choose what you want to eat with what you want to accomplish and how you desire to please God.

When we step away from dieting rules, our food decisions become internal and can be motivated by our own goals and desires.

We learn how to decide when we want to have a piece of cake and when we want to have a salad.

And, when those decisions are our own– we exercise freedom AND discipline, rather than restriction and reaction.

So, Are You Ready to Ditch Diets?

Are you ready to say goodbye to the dieting drama that sucks up your precious time, energy, and joy so that you can live the life you were created to live?

Here’s a quick To-Do List to get you going today!

1. Get Your Essential Guide!

First things first, make sure that you sign-up for the Grace Filled Plate mailing list and grab hold of a copy of 5 Strategies to Improve Your Diet Without Changing What You Eat. This guide will give you a break from an obsessive food-focus and help you hone in on areas of your life that may be contributing to your eating challenges.

And, by signing up for my mailing list (which you can do with any freebie you see), you’ll receive a welcome series of emails that will walk you towards the lifelong health and fitness solution you have been searching for. It’s really that good!

2. Read These Supportive Blog Posts:

Listed below are a few blog posts that will help you make over your mindset and ditch diets so that you can begin to walk away from restrictive food plans that are making you crazy!

• Diet Side Effects: What Nobody Told You and 3 Things to Do About It
• How to Ditch Diet Perfectionism (because it’s killing your progress)
• 5 Strategies of a Successful Health & Weight Loss Coach 

3. Give yourself a TON of grace.

Breathe a sigh of relief.
You are not alone. 
This time is going to be different.

The most important piece of your journey is found in giving yourself grace. It was only when I allowed myself the room to “fail” that my slips became insignificant and began to fade away.

Try not to compare this journey to your past attempts at weight loss. Here you will learn about personalized tools that fit into your life (not the other way around). You’ll discover why God is not mad you messed up your diet and how His Word can propel you forward.

You’ll learn how to give yourself grace and that grace will be The Thing that propels you toward your goals.

I think you are going to love it!

Something New

I hope this introduction to Grace Filled Plate and seeing how you can ditch diets has encouraged you.

You turned to diets with the best of intentions, but because of their poor design, they failed you. If you swam along with the current of today’s world, you found yourself trying to fix the “problem” with yet another diet.

There just didn’t seem to be another option. But now you are seeing that with the right tools and the right mindset, you can find life after dieting!

If you have questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to me at [email protected].