Why Can't I Get Back on a Diet?!

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Why can't I get back on a diet? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert, and fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Cindy from Facebook asks, why can't I get back on a diet? I lost £25 seven years ago.

I've gained 5 back. I'm worried.

All right, well, maybe you've been looking at diets all wrong. I have a definitely different take on this.

I will be right back with the answer.

Stay with me.

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All right, Cindy, so first, again, unpacking the fact that you are taking action before this goes all the way back. This is why I recommend weighing in every single day. And I think we emotionally need to redefine our relationship with the scale. Because people have this whole issue with the scale is that when they step on the scale, it's telling them if they're a bad or a good person. You wouldn't feel that way about your blood sugar monitor or your oura ring or your apple watch. This is all you're doing is getting information. So your weight is super important information because if you jump on the scale one day and it's up £3 from the day before, then likely you ate something that you were intolerant to that caused some inflammation, right? So you want to be using the scale to see, to check in, to see what's working for you, what, what isn't, and you want to do it every day. Because if you see the slow, steady creep, you got to get that figured out before it gets out of hand. Now, that brings up a bigger concept, and this is the concept of a diet. So I am working on my next book, the Virgin Anti Diet. Everything I've ever written is framed very differently than what typical diets are. The way I see a diet is this. A diet is something that we do short term to get a therapeutic result, to learn something about ourselves. You may find out that when you go through a specific diet that it did not work, that it was not a good thing for you, which is great. You take that information into your everyday eating plan. Now, when I wrote the Virgin Diet, it was purely for you to go through and take out the seven most common high food and tolerance foods. Go through the program, getting them all out, healing your gut, swapping in other foods, and then after the end of three weeks, going in and checking in with each of these foods to see which foods work for you and which foods don't so that you can design your eating plan that's going to help you stay healthy and at your ideal body composition. Right? So you had a diet that you use short term to figure out which foods worked for you and which foods didn't so that you could put it in your daily eating plan. That is how I want you to think of these things. So you went on a diet. You figured out what in that diet really worked well for you. You brought that into your eating, your daily eating plan. You are using whatever you're using tracking every day to check your weight. You might be checking your blood sugar. Usually once you figure that out, you can, you know, you don't need to do it all the time, but I want you to do your weight every day and your waist and hip measurements once a week. Because if you see those starting to shift, you got to go, what's going on now? Maybe it's not diet at all. Maybe if you're a woman and you're 45, you're heading into menopause, maybe your thyroid function went off, maybe you're under stress, you know, so then you start to go, okay, what has changed here? What is going on? This happened to me last year during the pandemic. My weight started going up a pound a day. Well, that is not normal. I'm really stable. I like have a 2 pound weight variation and all of a sudden it's the high. Like I'm 6ft tall. I weigh 150 pounds normally. I'm, I'm about 12, 13% body fat. And all of a sudden my weight went 152, 153, 154, 155. Like, like 156. Okay, so I'm kind of going, all right, what the heck is going on? Like, this is not normal for me. Found out that I had an autoimmune issue kicking up due to some crazy stress that I was going through. So that was critical because had I not been stepping on the scale, I mean, you know, I was home wearing like stretchy workout clothes every day. I wouldn't have caught it probably for £10. So really important to use this scale for information. And you've done a great job doing that. So the first thing is, you know, checking in and going, all right, like, what has gone on here? Use a diet journal and go, is this, like, is this something going on with what I'm eating? Do. Am I eating foods that I'm intolerant to have? I let snacking jump back into my life. Am I not eating? Following at least a 12 hour intermittent fast? Am I eating before bed? Has some just bad habits got in place? Is sugar sneaking in? This is where I use the virgin diet and then I use the sugar impact diet. So we get those things back under control and get you back into your daily eating plan. And this is what I like to do in my community. I'll do a detox at least twice a year. Just kind of go, okay, do we need to regroup on some of the good behaviors? So that's the first thing. The next thing is be in a group. So I have a Facebook group, the JJ Virgin Lifestyle Community. Get in a group where people will support you, where people have similar goals and ideally get an accountability partner and ideally do a group program a couple times a year. You know, like, if you're in my community and you see me doing a detox, jump in there and accountability partner or hire a coach. Get someone in there to help you. That's why back when I was a personal trainer, way back when, you know, I had people, I was like, you know how to work out? They go, I know, but I won't do it without you. I'm like, okay, you know, so do what you need to do for that. Accountability is super important and then really important. Be really clear on why you're doing this. Really see your future self of who you are, like what, what, what being healthy means to you. You know, what being at your ideal body composition, what's best for you feels like, the energy, the clear headedness, the good mood, your clear skin, all that stuff. Really get so clear of that picture and why that's important to you. Be so clear on the why, right? And make sure that you have that. If you're desperate, freaked out and full of self hate, this will never work. You have to come from a place of self love, self caring, seeing your future self, knowing exactly what it is and then doing what it takes to get there. And, and we have all of the resources, so you're in a good place. All right, that is a wrap. If you are listening and you are not a podcast subscriber, easy enough to do, go to subscribetoj.com and I will hook you up.

This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert.

I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribe to jj.

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