How I Quit Yo-Yo Dieting: My 7-Step Guide
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Are you tired of the endless cycle of yo-yo dieting, feeling trapped in a pattern of restriction and deprivation?
Welcome to Embrace Your Real. In this episode, I share my personal journey and seven practical steps to break free from the dieting mentality and embrace a more balanced approach to health and wellness. Whether you're struggling with weight loss, body image, or self-worth, this episode offers guidance and support to help you navigate towards a healthier, happier you. Tune in to discover practical strategies for lasting change and empowerment on your health journey.
What I discuss:
Step 1: I said goodbye to diets.
Step 2: I started eating more.
Step 3: I got my macros custom calculated.
Step 4: I reverse dieted.
Step 5: I stopped having “off-limit” foods
Step 6: I changed my mindset about exercising.
Step 7: I stepped off the scale.
If you loved this episode, be sure to tune in to…
Episode 46: Why You Should Consider a Reverse Diet (The Only Diet I Support!)
Episode 428: 8 Non-Scale Victories for Sustainable Progress (Part 1)
Episode 430:8 Non-Scale Victories for Sustainable Progress (Part 2)
If you want more from me, be sure to check out...
Follow me on Instagram: @juliealedbetter | @embraceyourreal | @movementwithjulie
Movement With Julie | App: https://sale.movementwithjulie.com/
Macro Counting Made Simple Online Academy: https://www.macrocountingmadesimple.com/
Website: www.juliealedbetter.com
Get my eBook: FREE Macro Counting Ebook
Amazon Storefront: Julie Ledbetter's Amazon Page
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Hey there, beautiful human you're listening to Embrace Your Real with me, Julie Ledbetter, a podcast where I empower you to just be you. With each episode, I get you a dose of real talk and actionable advice for building your confidence, honoring your body, and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned. If you're ready to embrace your real. Let's get it. Let's go. [00:00:27][21.0]
[00:00:27] Hello and welcome back to another episode on the Embrace Your Real podcast. I lived a decade of my life yo yo dieting and to me, honestly, that felt like a lifetime. I know for some of you guys, you could be stuck in this yo yo dieting trap for maybe even longer than I was in, and you just don't know how to get out of it. And the thing about yo yo dieting is that it is not the solution for building the body that we want. In fact, it is really the anti-solution. It is the number one thing that is truly stopping you from building the body that you want. And if you don't learn how to break free from this toxic cycle that you're stuck in, you may never get to where you want to be. And my goal on this podcast is to always help you get to where you want to be in terms of building the body that you want in the most sustainable way. I know that that's a hard truth to hear, but accepting this, the fact that yo yo dieting is the anti solution that is actually the first step in the right direction. And so how did I break free from fad diets? How did I break free from yo yo dieting. That's exactly what I'm going to be sharing with you guys. In today's episode of Embrace Your Real. [00:01:32][65.4]
[00:01:32] I'm going to be sharing a seven step process that I followed that completely changed my body, my mindset, and really allowed me to heal both of these. And this process is very, very simple, easy for anybody to follow. So be sure to tune in. Before we dive in though, I wanted to share this review. It comes from BK girl ha! She gave a five star review and said inspiring. I love this podcast. It is exactly what I need to hear to help me go in the right direction. Thank you Julie. Well thank you so much. I'm so grateful that this podcast is helping you, and thank you for taking time out of your day to send in this review. They really do mean so much to me and our team. Just kind of understand how this podcast is helping you and how the episodes in maybe in particular, or just the podcast in general is helping you. So thank you, thank you, thank you. Okay, so let's dive into my seven step process on how I quit yo yo dieting. Step number one I literally said capiche? Two diets I said goodbye diets. Diets are the number one thing that will hold you back from building the body that you want, plain and simple, like diets will help with short term results, but in the long term they will kill your metabolism and most likely you'll end up gaining more weight than you even had before you started dieting. So step number one is really breaking free from these yo yo dieting. And what I did to help me break free was to just say goodbye to them forever. No more low carb crazes, no more low fat crazes, no more low calorie following whatever popular fad diet you know it was of the year. [00:03:01][89.1]
[00:03:02] What are that? Whether that's keto, whether that's intermittent fasting, like those are all, in my opinion, very fad diets. Now, there are very particular reasons why someone could go on intermittent fasting. And I've done tons of other episodes on that. But in my particular circumstance, and just based on working with thousands of women over the last decade, they're fad diets and likely they're not going to last long term. Instead, what I did was I simply just started focusing on nourishing my body with what it needed. Because here's what most of us don't really realize is that dieting and nourishing your body, those are what it needs. And those are two separate things, right? And in fact, they're complete opposites. Dieting and nourishing your body are on the complete opposite ends of the spectrum. Dieting really focuses on deprivation, whereas nourishing your body focuses on what it needs in abundance. And you really can shift your mindset from, I can't eat this or these are off limits to my body needs this, or I need to feel my body with this. And I also realize the more that I dieted, the harder things became that. The more that I dieted, the harder it became to lose weight, the more that I dieted, the harder it became to actually stick to my daily intake, that my diet that I was following. The more that I dieted, the further I got away from actually building the body that I wanted. Right. I wanted long term results, and the constant dieting and falling off the diet was just exhausting and it wasn't sustainable. And so I needed to make a change. And saying goodbye to diets was good was honestly the best solution for me. And it's allowed me to now live a decade of no dieting and to be able to build the body that I want and not only build the body that I want, but maintain it. [00:04:44][102.2]
[00:04:44] Which is the most important thing, right? Of course, saying goodbye to the one thing that you know, when it comes to weight loss, that's going to be hard. Like maybe dieting is all, you know, maybe that's been multiple decades of you trying to lose the weight and you thought that dieting was the solution, but maybe just you thought maybe I haven't found the right diet yet. I understand that saying goodbye to restriction and living in this weight loss mode constantly, that can be very, very scary. Like just plain and simple because it's really all you know. And you're afraid that without the restriction, like you're going to gain a bazillion pounds, like I get it, I get that mindset because that was me for so, so long. That's what held me back from saying goodbye to diets forever. And if you. Feel this way. I just need you to know that speaking from experience like it couldn't be further from the truth. And I know that that's, you know, easy to say, harder to believe. But I want to kind of explain more on that in the next point, which is step number two. I started eating more like I no longer restricted my calorie intake because I learned that my body actually needs calories in order to burn calories. Yes, that's right, your body needs more calories to burn more calories. Like, have you ever been on vacation where you allowed yourself to eat a little bit more without restriction, and then you actually come back? Maybe you didn't do as many workouts and you came back and you feel like, man, I'm actually a little bit leaner than I was. Or maybe you feel like I looked better now than I did, you know, prior to my vacation. [00:06:11][87.0]
[00:06:12] And this is because your body needs the calories in order to transform your body composition. Like you can't have an efficient metabolism if there's nothing for your body to burn or if you're you. And also more on that. Your body can't change its composition if it doesn't have the building blocks that it needs in order to do so. So I learned that in order to change my body composition and become more leaned and toned for lack of a better term, which is basically just, you know, reducing my overall body fat, restricting myself through diets. That was not the solution. My body actually needed food in order to make the transformation. I learned that food is actually my friend in the process of building the body that I want instead of my enemy, and I just needed to learn how to use it properly, and I needed to be educated in that area. Step number three I got my macros custom calculated. Now this was something. For so long I thought macro counting was a diet. And I'm here to tell you macro accounting is not a diet in my opinion. It is a tool that can help you optimally fuel your body. That's simply how I look at it. Because every single person's body is different. Every person's goal is different. Every person's age, height, activity level, all those things are different. And macro counting is not just a one size fits all solution, right? Everybody's macros and custom macros, protein, carbs, and fats are going to be completely different based on where you're at and what your goals are. And so when I learned that, I learned that, number one, my body needed more calories. And number two, once I learned that, I was like, okay, I don't know exactly how many calories I needed. [00:07:44][92.7]
[00:07:45] And that's where macro counting really gave me the education and the tools that I needed. I understood that there was a point of diminishing returns, right? My body needed more food, but not too much food. So kind of what's the sweet spot? And I also knew that, you know, I couldn't just do a quick Google search and find random numbers on the internet because, again, macro counting is a completely custom solution. It's a completely custom tool. And also recognizing which I've talked about, if you tune in to any other episode, I've talked about this a lot, but there are many different phases in our macro counting journey, and you shouldn't be staying in one phase, you know, unless it's maintenance phase, you can really stay at that. If you don't have specific goals and you're really happy where you're at, you feel like you're having enough energy. You feel really good in your body, like you can stay it maintenance mode forever, like however long you want. But when it comes to a body fat loss, when it comes to a muscle gain or muscle building phase or reverse diet, those are all phases. And so you have to recognize that your body will likely need different numbers based on what phase are in as well. And again, like I mentioned, macro counting is based on my body. It's based on my goals. It's based on my activity level because that's completely different from other people's. And so when I was finally able to overcome just kind of my lack of clarity, and that was honestly just through educating myself more about macro counting and recognizing, oh, it's actually isn't a diet. This is a solution for me. This is actually a tool that I can have in my toolbox forever, because it allows me to feel educated on how much my body needs to be properly fueled so that I can reach the goals that I want. [00:09:19][93.7]
[00:09:19] And this was honestly one of the biggest game changers because there was no more guessing. It was just black and white. This is what my body needed, and if I gave what my body needed, I would see results like literally so black and white. Because that is exactly what happened. And if you're wanting to get your custom macros calculated, if you're wanting to learn more about that, I do have a program. I will link it in the show notes below, but if you've tuned in to any of my other episodes, which if you haven't, or maybe you haven't in a while and you want to learn more about macro counting, just do a simple browse through my episodes I have. I mean, hundreds of episodes I think we're on like episode four. I don't even know now, like up to 430 or 4. I don't even know what the episode number is, but I've done hundreds of episodes on macro counting, different phases, how to figure them out so you can get tons and tons of free resources on the podcast. But if you want kind of just Condensed Academy, that will teach you how to properly fuel your body. I do have a program for that which I will link in the show notes. Step number four I reverse dieted. So I was just talking to you about different phases in macro counting. Reverse dieting is one phase of macro counting. And when I quit dieting and when I. I decided to start nourishing my body with what it actually needed. My boyfriend at the time now has been Joshua. He really explained to me the importance of reverse dieting and and so he explained that to me. And then I actually ended up hiring a separate coach in my journey, Lane Norton, who is awesome. [00:10:44][84.9]
[00:10:44] He's so full of knowledge and science, and he has a PhD, and he is just so wise beyond words when it comes to fitness and nutrition and just busting all of the myths. So I highly recommend you check out Bio Lane. But I hired him, I did a reverse diet and I reversed. I did for I believe it was about 25 weeks on average. A typical reverse side is anywhere from 8 to 16, sometimes 20, sometimes even longer depending on just like what your what your goals are and what your where you're currently at. But I realized that I couldn't just go from depriving my body to nourishing my body overnight because my metabolism would be so confused. And so since, you know, my body was getting used to and really was used to running on such low calories, when I did fall off the diet and went back to kind of eating regularly, like my body would blow up, like I would gain some. And a lot of it obviously was water weight, but I would, I would be so bloated. I felt so, so just uncomfortable in my body. And that's because my body was like, whoa, extra calories. We haven't had these in a while. What do we do with these? And and so my body, what did it do? It didn't know what to do with it. So it started as fat, right. Fat is your body's energy reserve. And so reverse dieting really allows your metabolism to slowly adapt over time to more increased calories. And this is very slow and methodical. And the number one thing that I tell women when they ask me about a reverse diet is I ask them like, do you are you ready to commit to a very slow and methodical way? You know, that might take anywhere from 8 to 20, 24 weeks of your life, but in return you'll be able to, you know, maintain on 2100 or 2000 calories a day. [00:12:27][102.3]
[00:12:27] And and oftentimes their their first shot says, no, I want the results now. And for me I say honestly, okay, the reverse side is not for you. If you do not go into a reverse diet with this mindset of, okay, I'm willing to, you know, maybe give up my short term goals that I have for this long term sustainable result that I get for a lifetime. Okay, it is worth it, right? So if you can really get into that mindset, reverse dieting can genuinely change your life. I've now done four full reverse diets in my life and I, you know, previously now I'm pregnant. Obviously, if you guys didn't know, I am now pregnant, but, I was able to maintain my weight for, I mean, 4 to 4 and a half years, I have not really gone. I mean, there's maybe been some times where I've been in a slight deficit for maybe four, six weeks to, you know, just tone up, feel a little bit better. But then I would just go back to maintenance. And so because I've been able to get to my body to a place where it's efficiently able to, you know, maximize its optimal ability on 21 to 2400 calories a day. I haven't felt the need to really do anything but live in maintenance mode, and that's because I took the time to do a reverse diet. So I do have, again, my macro kind of simple online academy. We talk about all the different phases and then based on where you're at when you come to us, once you purchase the program, you're going to have a custom questionnaire form that will allow us to kind of understand where you're at and what your goals are. And if reverse dieting is something that either you want to do or you kind of give us the free rein to say, hey, this is what we suggest, that is definitely something that I recommend. [00:14:04][97.1]
[00:14:05] So again, I will link that in the show notes. I also did kind of a deeper dive into reverse dieting. It's kind of an OG episode, episode 46, but why you should consider a reverse diet the only diet I support. I will be sure to link that in the show notes that you can easily go tune into that, but that will definitely give you a ton more information. Just kind of on the nitty gritty of reverse dieting. Step number five I stopped having off limit foods. So this step especially was the key to sustainability in my opinion. I realized that once I really let go of good and bad foods, like everything changed once I realized that, you know, if I could just stick to my protein carbon fat allotment, eating a food that I once thought was quote unquote bad actually wasn't going to make me gain weight. And I realized that it wasn't the food itself that's causing me to gain weight. It was the amount of food that was causing me to overeat and gain weight. And so once I really allowed myself to eat the food that I wanted on a regular basis, I didn't feel the need to kind of gorge myself with food, like on a special occasion. And that's what would typically happen when I would do these extreme yo yo diets. I would be really good for a week, two weeks, and then, you know, something would happen. Maybe I would have a stressful day, or it was a vacation, or I had a special occasion and then I would just go all out, and it was just this toxic cycle where I would go all out because I didn't know when I could eat that food again. [00:15:25][80.3]
[00:15:25] And then. You know, come Monday morning, I was like, hey, I'm going to get back on it. And it was just this exhausting cycle that I was in and I couldn't get myself out of it. Right. And so I learned that I no longer have to have this scarcity mindset if I, you know, if I want to have pizza, I can have pizza, I can fit a slice through a pizza into my daily allotment if I want to have ice cream or I want to have chocolate every day, I can do that right. And I could both eat the foods that I want and still build the body that I wanted. And honestly, this was the realization that really changed the game. Like, I realized that I never had to yo yo diet again because there was no really falling off track. I didn't have to feel guilty for eating the slice of pizza and have that toxic all or nothing mentality, and this was really the secret to the longevity of the results that I was seeing. This is really how I knew that this was going to be a long term thing. Step number six I changed my mindset about exercising. So once I learned that foods don't have to be good or bad, they just kind of what they are, what they are. I no longer felt the need that I needed to burn off bad foods. And if you are stuck in this mindset like you know exactly what I'm talking about, that mindset of oh my gosh, X, Y, and Z. So I'm going to go into the gym and I'm going to, you know, try to burn off X amount of calories. And if I'm being honest, like the number one reason why I worked out prior was to really punish. [00:16:44][78.9]
[00:16:45] I punish myself for the foods that I would eat. Like I would go to the gym with a number in mind x amount of calories in these cookies. I need to burn X amount of calories to burn off those cookies. And that's just like how I thought that was my mindset around exercise. And that's not how real weight works anyway, so I'm so glad that I, number one, broke free from this mentality. And number two, I just learned I educated myself about this, but I really started to switch my mindset and I started working out because my body deserves this movement, right. I realized that moving my body was an honor to my body, hence why I always talk about. And my mantra is honor your body with movement because it's so true. That's what movement should be about. I also realized that less is more with exercising, since I no longer needed to workout to burn off all of the quote bad things that I was eating. Able to kind of understand how exercise works. And if you really want to build, you know, a lean, toned physique, working out more necessarily isn't going to help, especially if working out more comes solely from cardio. It's all about working out smarter and wiser. And so I realized that, you know, I just need to resistance train 30 to 45, sometimes 60 minutes. But typically my workouts range anywhere from 30 to 55 minutes, 3 to 5 times a week. And I started doing that, and I saw way better results than when I just would spend, you know, hours upon hours on the elliptical machine or the treadmill or the StairMaster. It was so much more time efficient and also so much more effective. [00:18:13][88.2]
[00:18:14] But most importantly, it was sustainable. What I was doing before for my workouts, when yo yo dieting just wasn't sustainable, right? When I couldn't keep up with the workouts, I would just fall off track and it would just keep me in this toxic, yo yo, you know, cycle that I felt like I had no way out of. Sustainable. In my opinion, consistency and consistency means no yo yo dieting. So if you really want to get off kind of the cardio train, maybe that's your mindset right now. Maybe you're in where I was and this was me, you guys, for a decade of my life. So I get it. Like, I don't want you to feel shame. I want you to feel hope, to know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Because when I finally stepped off the cardio machine first for all of my workouts and started resistance training, and when I say that I'm not totally against cardio, I think there are so many benefits to cardiovascular and so many benefits to cardio in general. But my sole foundation is resistance training now, and that's exactly why I created the movement with Juliana, because I wanted to make resistance training accessible through dumbbell only workouts, because I know that dumbbell only workouts at home have completely transformed my life. And I wanted them, and I wanted to create a plan that could transform other women's lives. Whether you're a busy professional, whether you're a stay at home mom, whatever your your day to day looks like, I wanted to give you an accessible way to be able to have resistance training as your foundation. So if you want to learn more about my workouts, I will link my movement with Julie app in the show notes below. [00:19:41][87.3]
[00:19:42] But that was key. Was really learning more about exercising and changing my mindset around exercising. And last but not least, step number seven I stepped off of the scale. I realized that the scale was driving so much of my yo yo dieting, like the scale was ultimately controlling me. I was so obsessed with this number and I let this number dictate what I ate, how much I ate, how much I didn't eat, how much I exercised, how I felt about myself, my self-worth. It just controlled so much of my life, and letting go of the scale made me break free from the yo yo dieting, and allowed me to do it in such a way. That was so much easier, because when I finally let go of that control that the scale had over me, I was able. To be so much more free in my mind, right? So many women try to take healthier ways to build him the body that they want, but what they want is instant results. And when they don't see instant results in that number, you know, is either staying the same or it's going up, they lose faith in the process, they give up and they go back to yo yo dieting. So I just want to encourage you, if that is you, please hear me when I say that it's not worth it because you can. Absolutely. And you likely will be changing your body composition without the scale ever budging. And it's also one thing to note which I've done some episodes on this in the past couple weeks, and I will link both of those in a second, but you should be likely changing your body composition. If you are staying consistent. You're properly feeling your body. [00:21:15][93.3]
[00:21:15] You're staying consistent with your movement. You're moving your body in an optimal way. You are likely going to have body composition changes that the scale will never be able to show you. Right. And also, one thing that's so important to recognize, too, is that you see yourself every single day, day in and day out. And it's really hard to notice those small micro changes that are happening daily. Trust me, there's one thing that I've learned when being pregnant is, you know, I feel like it's this sudden. It's this gradual and then sudden change, even though it's not. Because if you actually look at your week by week pictures, if you're if you're documenting your pregnancy week by week, you see, oh, you're slowly growing. But I feel like, you know, you see yourself every day, so you just don't know how much you're actually growing in terms of your bump. And so it's the same thing when it comes to your to your body fat loss phase. If that's the goal that you are or you're wanting to build more muscle, you see yourself every day. So it's harder to see the changes. And so that's why I recommend progress photos. That's why I actually started using progress photos as my main way to monitor my progress as well as, you know, monitoring my energy levels, I consistency, calendar, everything like that. But I just realized when I focused on my progress photos instead and I didn't wear myself, I wouldn't obsess about those things. And let me tell you, you don't realize how much brain capacity you use up daily when you're obsessing about your weight loss so much, but when you can really let go of that and just focus on the results from other areas of how you're doing, you know, monitoring in so many other areas, whether that's progress photos, body measurements, consistency, calendar, how your sleep is, your energy levels, how strong you're feeling in your workouts, all of those things you realize, oh my gosh, there's so much space that was taken up in my brain for me, just obsessing over the weight. [00:23:04][108.2]
[00:23:04] And like I mentioned, I just did a two part series on the non scale victories and that I kind of outlined eight different ways to track your results without a scale. So I'll be sure to link both of those in the show notes below. But there you have it. That's my seven step process that I use to break free from yo yo dieting. I hope that you found this helpful. Let me quickly recap what I talked about in these seven steps. So step number one I said goodbye to diet. Step number two I started eating more. Step number three I got my macros custom calculated. Step number four I reversed sided. Step number five I stopped having off limit foods. Step number six I changed my mindset around exercising. And last but not least, step number seven I stepped off the scale. So a couple things that I mentioned in today's episode are the macro counting meet Simple Online Academy. If you're interested in learning more about that, I will be sure to link that. Or you can just simply go to macro Counting Made Simple AL.com. And then the other program that I mentioned was my app. So that is, you know, really accessible resistance training through dumbbell only workouts that you can do at home. I, you know, I about 20% of the women inside the app do them at the gym, but you really have that flexibility if you want to go to the gym a couple days a week, but you want to do the workouts primarily at home, you have that flexibility. All you need is a few pair of dumbbells, a small space in your phone. If you have a bench, that's awesome. If you have resistance band, that's option, awesome. [00:24:24][79.6]
[00:24:24] But it's also always optional. I always give alternate exercises as well, so you can learn more about that by going to sale. That's Sally that moment with julie.com. I will also link that in the show notes below. And then the episodes that I mentioned in today's episode was episode 46. Why you should Consider a Reverse diet the only diet I support. Episode 428 eight non scale victories for Sustainable Progress part one and then episode 430 I believe eight non scale victories for Sustainable Progress part two. But I will go ahead and link all of that in the show. Notes that you easily have all of those links available to you. That is all that I have for today's episode. I hope that this was helpful. I love you so dang much, I mean it, I'll talk to you on the next one. [00:25:16][51.3]
[00:25:16]All right, sister, that's all I got for you today. But I have two things that I need you to do. First thing, if you're not already following me on the gram, be sure to do so. Julie A Ledbetter. Yes, it's with an A in the middle for that daily post workout real talk, healthy tips and tricks, and honest accountability to keep your mind and heart in check. The second thing, be sure to subscribe to Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode. Thank you so much for joining me. It means the absolute world, and I'm going to leave you with one last thought. The most beautiful women that I have met in my life are the ones who are completely confident and secure in being authentically themselves. Remember that beauty goes so much deeper than the surface. So go out there and embrace it real because you're worth it. [00:25:55][0.0]