By: Bryna Gavin, MS, IFMNT, CNS
This was a question I was asked this morning by a client and I realized it that moment I’ve probably been asked this about one hundred times.
“Why do you call the foods you want me to eat a “protocol” instead of a diet?”
It’s a great question, and one that’s worth answering with a bit more than an Instagram post so I’d like to try to do that here. First things first: In integrative nutrition, we use food as medicine and work to use whole foods and changes to lifestyle (like managing stress, getting good quality sleep, and exercise) to help improve peoples’ health.
This is why during a session when we talk about certain foods, micronutrients, vitamins, minerals, etc that would be helpful to you for your specific needs, it’s meant in a therapeutic sense - not a “dieting” sense. Now, it’s true that the word “diet” by definition really just means the food that a person consumes, but that is not the way it is typically used it today’s society.
The term dieting (in the traditional sense, the way most Americans use it) is an umbrella term that typically refers to a form of short-term starvation.
Yep. I said it.
Although caloric restriction (think Weight Watchers) is typically the most popular, it’s basically a term that is synonymous with some type of restriction for the sake of weight loss.
When someone says “I’m on a diet”. What do you typically think of? This term carries with it a very heavy and negative connotation for many, and I want to help my clients step out of that mindset completely.
WHY I DON’T USE DIETS (A VERY BRIEF SYNOPSIS)
I meet with brilliant, successful people every single day who come to me talking about how they've "failed" at dieting and "have no will-power" around food but really what we’re looking at as an issue of willpower is actually an issue of a biological drive. As a general rule, fasting and restricting is counterproductive to appetite. It actually turns on the neurochemicals that drive us to eat. You have to remember... the body's M.O. is to stay alive. When it senses starvation (even in small amounts), it will naturally up-regulate its drive to eat.
You can't fight biology. When you deprive yourself of food, it's going to preoccupy your mind. You'll obsess over what you can't have. A starving body needs to be nourished, and trust me when I say that the biggest hurdle to a healthy relationship with food is restriction. (There was a starvation study by Ansel Keys where starving men were so preoccupied with food it would keep them up at night. They would collect recipe clippings of food they couldn’t have and lick the pages of cookbooks to try to satiate their cravings. I'm not kidding.) So the long and short of it is, while caloric deprivation may help you lose weight, it’s typically not sustainable weight loss and it does nothing to help a person foster a healthy, trusting relationship with real food.
WHY I DON’T LIKE “DIET DAYS” AND “CHEAT DAYS”
A lot of people love this approach because it gives them a faux sense of "balance". Eat a salad and lean protein all week, and splurge with whatever you want on the weekends. The problem with this is... weekends occur 104 days of the year. That's 260 days of restricting and 104 days (likely) overeating. This isn't balance... it's a yo-yo diet and an ineffective one at that. I once met a client who subscribed to this mindset and her birthday fell on a Tuesday and she didn’t allow herself a piece of birthday cake because it was during the week. If that isn’t torture I don’t know what is.
When we diet, we’re restricting the foods we allow ourselves to enjoy and in doing so, we’re stealing the joy of eating from ourselves. We lose touch with what we actually want and are trapped by what we think you "should" eat (and let's be honest.... no one wants a salad 365 days a year). Furthermore, when we get used to ignoring our hunger signals they begin to fade and now we’re screwing with our innate ability to listen to what our body needs.
Dieting, in every sense, gives a person the idea that they can’t be trusted to make their own choices about what goes in their body. It steals our sense of agency, and this is especially true for my clients who were put on a diet by their parents. At a very young age, they were given the message that they can’t be trusted with food and I don’t want our work to perpetuate that… I want it to heal it.
No matter how you look at it, eating is a social, cultural, and biological event that should be enjoyed.
The style of eating we put together for each individual person is their therapeutic protocol. It's how they are going to use food as medicine to nourish their body. It’s not about manipulating our bodies to be a certain size… it’s about healing gut dysbiosis, regulating hormones, supporting your organs of detoxification and moving your body so you can make dopamine and oxytocin. It’s about having more energy, improving your cognitive function and digestion and so much more. Now is weight loss a side effect of working with a nutritionist? Yes, often. But I try to encourage my clients (or potential clients) not to fall into the trap of letting weight loss and “dieting” be your only goal.
There is so much more to be gained than just shedding a little weight.
Yours In Wellness,
Bryna