Discipline

90s diet culture was hard on discipline.

The mantra of "nothing tastes better than skinny feels" was everywhere, and I, like so many others, believed my inability to get skinnier was down to my lack of ability to say no to another biscuit. You lazy hag.

I remember the frustration of watching my female friends wolf down a bowl of pasta after PE while I said no. As a teenager I had a strong craving to be an adult, and I think that fed into it. Saying no, applying discipline, somehow made me feel more grown up, more in control.

But periods of not eating led quickly to bingeing. My weight wasn't actually an issue at this point. It was when I reached 17 that I started to put on weight, fairly quickly, and I became equally scared of and obsessed with the scales. Every Monday I'd start a new diet. Every week I would fail.

I went to the gym consistently and did loads of cardio, believing that was the way, but it just made me hungrier and made discipline even harder to hold onto.

It was when I was 19 that I first heard about a plant based diet. Before that I'd been following the low carb keto/ atkins diet of that era, heavy on protein and fat, light on everything else. As someone who loved animals, loved our wild spaces, and was already a bit of a health obsessive, this new, radical idea intrigued me.

I gave Veganuary a go and got so much wrong (you do not need to eat beans at every meal), but I lost a load of fat for the first time while feeling full. I had energy and motivation to go to the gym. My digestion got so much better. My skin got better. I felt stronger. I felt great.

I believe there are many reasons that happened, not just the removal of animal products. I added in a lot more carbs, and contrary to what we believed, carbs won't make you fat, a calorie surplus will, and carbs, along with the fibre in them, are very satiating. For me, I was full for a lot longer after a proper, balanced meal, which reduced how much I had to rely on discipline to get through the day. Carbs gave me energy, and energy made me enjoy life and the gym a hell of a lot more.

Plant based foods are also generally lower in calories. Dairy and meat are higher in fat than most plant proteins, and fat has the greatest calories per gram, roughly double that of protein or carbs.

I also had to remove a lot of the junk food from my diet. Back in 2016 we didn't have the array of plant based junk food available now, so I really was eating a whole foods diet. I think the removal of a lot of the crisps, biscuits, cakes and chocolate bars had a big impact on how I felt.

People may see eating a plant based diet as involving discipline. I liked animal products. I'd enjoyed steak, chicken was a staple, and I loved cheese. But I genuinely cared about the ethics of what I'd seen, so swapping to something else felt less like discipline. On diets the choice was always on me, oh was I going to be ‘naughty’ and have the cake, whereas with this, there was a bigger reason to choose a different meal.

I ate whenever I fancied, I felt like I rarely had to rely on discipline. I ate filling, lovely carbs, and huge plates of colourful food. The gym was enjoyable. Running was fun. It was all just so much easier for me.

You're making it a lot harder for yourself if you're relying on discipline alone. And if you're struggling with your goals, it's not that everyone else around you has so much more willpower than you. Food should be one of the great joys, but the food environment we're in now, with marketing constantly testing you, makes it so much harder to trust that. There is a way through that doesn't rely on discipline.

This is how I help clients now, finding the version of eating that actually works with your appetite and your life, rather than one that depends on gritting your teeth through it. If you'd like to chat about improving your relationship with food and reaching your goals in a way that's actually enjoyable, get in touch.