Despite all the efforts to maintain weight or lose weight, are you a part of the 60% of the population of Quebec that is overweight? You are not alone, and this statistic continues to grow.
Therefore, it is important to understand that weight gain is not just a personal difficulty or a lack of food knowledge, but rather a social issue in which we tend to be influenced. Nowadays, being overweight is now the norm.
This article aims to help you understand the societal behaviors that lead us to be "like everyone else". I'm telling you here the efficient ways to let yourself be influenced by society or to gain back the lost weight. In other words, here's how to never succeed in maintaining a healthy weight.
1. Make sure you always finish your plate
It has always been said since we were very small; "Finish your plate, not all kids out there have the chance to eat - Eat up, otherwise you will have no dessert". Why even doubt this habit so deeply anchored in us? No matter what your appetite is, even if your body tells you to stop, make sure you eat every last bite because the plate tells you so.
2. Accept and eat all gifted foods
Your colleagues are very nice and always bring treats to share at work? They show you that they love you by bringing tasty treats. By accepting them, you will fall into a vicious cycle. Your colleagues will understand that you love these types of food, and will continue to bring more to make you even happier. You will then continue to find it difficult to refuse these little pleasures, and you will continue to eat more often than you really want to.
3. Living for the "Cheat Day"
To starve and then to live the pleasure of overeating? Keep living in these food controlling habits during the week, then eat too much and lose control once the weekend is over. This is the best way to create a positive emotional connection with junk food, and a negative emotional connection with healthy food. The art of deprivation to afford the pleasure of overeating! Reaching a lifestyle that allows you to have all the fun in tasting, rather than in overconsumption, would allow you to keep your goals fun every day rather than just one day out of the seven; so do not try it.
4. Let your nutritionist or "coach" dictate your appetite
Do not take control of your body and your needs and let your coach build you an impeccable plan that you follow word by word. That way, you will exchange the plate served as a pledge of appetite by the orders of your coach. So, as soon as you stop following the unsustainable indications of your coach, having to count your points, portions or calories, you will once again let the plate dictate your appetite, and the cycle will go on.
5. Eat to please someone else
When you're invited to your parents or friends’ house, it would be rude to leave food on the plate, wouldn’t it? We trust our host to determine the exact amount of food to consume. For its part, the host wants to ensure that we satisfy our hunger, in order to make us happy, so the strive to put as much as possible in our plates. This vicious cycle of forcing ourselves to finish our plate will allow a progressive accumulation of weight and give the impression to our host that we are never satisfied. Say hello to overconsumption!
6. Eat by complicity
Your friend wants an ice cream cone, but you're not hungry for it? Apparently, you do not need to be hungry to eat ice cream! Ignoring your hunger signals and pleasing your friends is a perfect way to fall into weight gain. We also tend to feel guilty by saying that if our friend eats it, then we can too! In that very moment, it is our friend’s cycle of appetite that we follow rather than our own. Since he is hungry, they are not necessarily over consuming ; but we are.
7. Go for liquids rather than solid foods!
Do you have trouble eating all the food you think you need in a day? Put the food in a blender or a juicer! This will ensure that you eat even more than you need, as the liquids are digested faster; thus, you will not feel full as fast! Magic!
The conclusion to be drawn I listed here a few reflexes of society in order to bring reflection on its food behaviors, but more particularly on the issues which tend to control us and which lead us all to gain weight. We are often strongly conditioned by these behaviors and they are so ubiquitous in our society, that we often do not acknowledge them.
Once we know our stakes, we can succeed in getting out of this social overconsumption. We all fall into a trap one moment or the other. Nutritionists on our team can help you find individual strategies, so you can achieve your goals in a sustainable way.
