The response to our upcoming 12 Week Habit Project On-Ramp has been awesome! Sean and I are looking forward to working with all of you who signed up already.

You can join an existing Habit Project Facebook group at nearly any time ' but for the On-Ramp, there's a concrete start date and we can't let new people just jump in at any time.

Our First On-Ramp group starts on July 13th (and I’ll be joining this group as both participant and coach!), and registration ends tonight at 8pm Pacific/11pm Eastern.

If you have an iPhone or iPad and want to get started with our community and coaching program for people who want to be strong, confident, and healthy without fads or deprivation, click the link below:

The Habit Project On-Ramp

And, if you don’t have in i-device, check out our ‘regular’ Habit Project groups, which have rolling admissions, on Facebook here.

You guys know I’ve been dealing with chronic pain for a WHILE. Seven or eight years, actually. It started with an injury in ’07, I slipped on a wet sidewalk and dislocated my kneecap. It healed, but a level of pain remained, and it was actually one of the reasons I started exercising. Exercise was my primary (and only) pain management tool for several years, until I needed to add pain medication to the mix as well. Over the last year, the pain has worsened to the point that I’ve had to gradually cut back on the amount, kind, and intensity of exercise I’ve been able to do. It ultimately got so bad that a month ago I had surgery, to remove some bone fragments that had dislodged when I dislocated it and have been floating around causing trouble all this time, as well as some bone spurs and scar tissue. And so, for the last month, I’ve basically been sitting or lying down most of the day as I recover from surgery.

The result? I’m not in the kind of shape I was in even a year ago. One of the pain meds I have been using produced a 10 pound weight gain, and I went into the surgery a little worried that the complete inactivity required for recovery would cause even more weight gain. When I expressed my relief on my Facebook wall that the eating habits I’ve established over the last 8 years helped me maintain my weight in spite of not being able to exercise (whew!), a couple people got mad at me for it. I’m supposed to be body positive, they said, I shouldn’t worry about my weight! One person crowed happily that I’d probably gained fat and lost muscle. I responded that I’m sure I have. I can see in the mirror that I’m softer and curvier, and I know I’m not as strong. This I am actually ok with, I like my body this way, and I like my body when it’s more muscular. Turns out I just like my body. Go figure!

But I do worry about my weight. I have a history of obesity, and health problems stemming from it. I also worry about not being active. Inactivity isn’t good for me. My blood sugar gets wonky, I get anxious and depressed, my migraines might come back, I’m just not as happy when I’m not getting my exercise.

So, while I’m relieved the eating habits I’ve built have kept me from gaining weight, I know that it’s important that I get active as quickly as possible (mindfully of my recovery from surgery, of course). My exercise habits have suffered, due to circumstances beyond my control. It’s time for me to start rebuilding those habits. And those habits may look different post-surgery than they did before.

So, it turns out I am human. It turns out life happens, and I have to be flexible. It turns out that sometimes, circumstances beyond our control can require us to change our behavior and build new habits.

And so, I’ll be participating in the new Habit Project On-Ramp program not just as a coach, but as a team-mate. I’ll be working on the habits right along with everyone else. I’ll be checking in daily with encouragement as a team mate, but also with support as a coach. I’ll be getting to know this group in ways I haven’t had the chance to get to know our other groups. I’ll be challenged, and struggle, and succeed right along with you guys. AND IT’S GONNA BE AWESOME.

Want to start this crazy journey with me? Or heck, just watch me flail a little and be human? Check out the program. I think it’s gonna be pretty powerful.

Guest post by Sean Flanagan

Often when Amber or I talk about how a calorie deficit is what produces weight loss and how a calorie surplus causes weight gain, people assume that this has to be achieved via calorie counting.

Being aware of calories is great and there can totally be value there, however 1) you're not going to count calories forever (we hope), and 2) unless you're in a tightly controlled scientific laboratory, your estimates for your calorie intake are always going to be exactly that ' estimates.

So how can we create a calorie deficit without aiming for a specific number' There are four different broad brush categories of habits that we use in the Habit Project to accomplish this ' each category complimenting the other.

Category 1: Satiety and Eating Pattern Awareness

I'm kind of cheating here since becoming more aware of your current patterns is essentially a built in 'meta habit' that ALWAYS happens when focusing on changing your habits one at a time. But specifically, we also have the 'record what you eat' habit which is 100 percent focused on becoming aware of current eating patterns.

In addition to the increasing awareness of what you eat, there is also increasing awareness for your body's satiety and hunger signals. Learning how to identify true hunger from hunger resulting from boredom, as well as what 'satisfied' feels like compared to 'stuffed', is critical for creating a calorie deficit without counting calories. If you're always eating when not hungry and eating until stuffed, your chances of creating a calorie deficit are not very high.

I put these in the same category as there is a lot of overlap ' often when people record what they eat, they start becoming aware of times where they eat mindlessly and then start the practice of checking in with their hunger/satiety. When we transition to habits on satiety awareness, we take this eating pattern awareness and we bring it to the next level.

Category 2: Food Habits That Maximize Satiety

Being aware of your satiety signals is awesome! What happens though if you're paying attention to your satiety signals but the foods you're eating add a lot of calories without adding a lot of satiety' This is where playing with the dietary variables that support satiety come into play. It's even possible that your time practicing your satiety awareness has taught you a few things about what types of foods make you fuller than others.

We have a few different food habits that we use to support satiety ' but the big two are really our protein and veggie habits. Most people can benefit from eating more protein, more veggies, or both. And they make a huge impact on how full we get.

Some meal time variables that impact satiety are; 1)Fiber content, 2) water content, 3) protein content, and 4) slowness of eating.

Category 3: Physical Activity Habits

The benefit of physical activity for creating a calorie deficit is of course that moving more means burning more calories per day. There are a few different ways we like approaching movement habits ' mainly we like to create habits that help people find enjoyment in walking and their preferred methods of resistance training.

The important thing to emphasize here is that the physical activity habits on their own are ALWAYS still good for health, but it's the appetite awareness and the maximizing of the satiety value of meals that enables the increases in movement to lead to a calorie deficit. If increased exercise leads to increased hunger and increased hunger means more meals where you're eating until you're too full with mostly foods that don't contribute much to your satiety, you could end up accidentally creating a calorie SURPLUS rather than a deficit.

Category 4: Habits That Maximize Your Chances for Success

The 4^th category is essentially all of the behaviors that contribute to a calorie deficit in a less direct way, but are still powerful for creating the health and fitness that you are aiming for. Our habit focused on self-compassion is the example we're the most proud of from this category ' as many Habit Project members have reported this habit had a strong impact on how they performed on every other habit. Apparently self-compassion doesn't burn many calories, but does impact a bunch of different components of your life to make the entire process less bumpy and more direct.

Other habits from this category would be sleep-related habits, as sleep helps to enable you to be more active AND become more aware of your satiety. Food and lifestyle skills habits like planning and prepping can also fit into this category.

Want Help Making These Habits Actually STICK?

While of course coaching is helpful for making changes, the combination of coaching AND community is super powerful. The more you support your team, the more they'll support you, and the more you support each other the more you'll feel accountable TO your team. In other words, the amount of energy you put into your community will help determine the power of the community in helping you create change.

We're incredibly proud of the communities we create in the Habit Project, and we hope you'll be a part of our newest one. On July 13^th, we start our 12 Week Habit Project On-Ramp (exclusively on iPhone/iPad) and enrollment is now open.

Over the 12 weeks, we'll be focusing on all 4 of the habit categories talked about in this article ' spread over 6 different habits ' to help you build a strong foundation in your habit-based approach towards fat loss success.

Registration closes Wednesday at 6:30pm pacific time/9:30 eastern ' you can grab your spot here:
http://seanflanaganwellness.com/habit-project-on-ramp/

And we do have something for those without an iPhone! Our Facebook-based Habit Project has rolling admissions, check it out, and sign up for the next admission day here:
Facebook Habit Project

Talk soon,

Sean Flanagan

Guest Post by Habit Project alum Meredith Gafill

'The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.' From the book Habit, by William James

This sums up my experience with the Habit Project better than I ever could. Simple to the point of boring but so spot on.

I came to be a part of the Habit Project by accident. I had signed up with Amber Rogers and Sean Flanagan to participate in their Body Recomp Program late last year. I had been working out pretty religiously but wasn't seeing the results that I wanted. Not quite enough muscle definition, a bit too much flab.

I was convinced that if I could just push myself a little harder that these goals would be mine. Push, push, push. If I could just do more and eat less, I would be better. Push, push, push. Work harder. Eat some magical combination of foods invented by someone smarter than myself. Push, push, push.

As it turns out, a week or so after I started the Recomp program, I found out that all that push, push, pushing had left me with a torn labrum in my left shoulder. Surgery would be in a few weeks and there would be no way to continue my kettlebell training. Benched! Even worse I wouldn't be able to do all the house and gardening chores that helped me burn so many, many calories. I felt totally bereft. Everything was going to fall apart.

Suddenly, the Recomp program seemed silly. If I couldn't lift then what was the point' Lucky for me, as I was checking in on the Recomp Group Facebook page, one of the other members of the group posted about the Habit Project. She asked Sean if she could switch out of the Recomp Program and try the Project instead. I was intrigued and asked for the same favor and was quickly welcomed into Group Panther, a division of the Habit Project. I had no idea about what I was doing there but things started rolling and I was learning as I went.

I had my surgery right after the switch and was pretty out of it for a few days but continued to check in with my team and read what others were experiencing with their habit work. As the days went on and I was finally able to live without handfuls of painkillers, I started to engage and participate in the first activity habit. Movement, exercise, some kind of workout. Could I do something every day' What would I like to do' Was I sure that I could do it daily' Once a week' Twice' Thrice' I settled on a morning walk, five days a week. You create your own goals in the Habit Project and walking was all I could really do. Nothing epic, but it was a start. Seemed a bit too easy but what the heck' I'd just try it. That morning walk has been with me ever since and I continue to absolutely love it. I can count the days that I have missed and they have only been because I was sick as a dog or had an unusually early appointment, which is rare.

Success! Right out the gate! I was reporting to my group daily and even participating as a group leader at times. We worked on one habit every two weeks and that we had to check in was what kept me REMEMBERING to do my new habit. Kept me on track, working towards bettering myself and creating a healthier lifestyle. The successes kept me engaged with the program.

I was patting myself on the back instead of always judging that I was doing too little. That little thing' Walking daily? It kept me from gaining weight during my long recovery (in fact, I lost weight) and I found that starting my day with a nice easy walk put me in a better frame of mind than my previous habit of grueling 5 to 8 mile runs. And I did it while eating very well as the next few habits were all based on taking in the proper amount of protein and vegetables.

I won't take you through every habit in the Project but I will tell you a few things you can expect. No one will ever tell you what you may or may not eat. You will not be given a strict plan to follow. You will not have any activity taken away, nor will you be required to use equipment or follow a particular exercise regimen or plan. You will be given a habit and then Sean, Amber and the rest of your group will be there to help you scale it to your lifestyle and needs at the time. I know, that sounds like work. You were hoping for a magical recipe to perfection'. Really, this is so much better because you invent your new life the way you want it, which is easier to maintain for life. These little changes' They lead to the freedom William James was referring to in the quote at the beginning of this post.

Freedom. I now have a handful of habits that streamline my days and make things so much easier. I eat 3 solid meals and have at least 5 servings of veggies on most days (I used to be a vicious meal skipper- I thought it was a good thing to fast) and my energy level is much higher than when I was skipping meals right and left. I take a good protein powder and probiotic daily. I walk 5 days a week and lift 3 days with pull up training in between. I go to bed and rise around the same time daily and I shut off the computer about an hour before bed and don't look again until I rise- this helps my mind calm so that I can rest better. I am nicer to myself (Self-compassion habit!) and have found that I am generally more relaxed and have a more positive outlook these days. I am done push, push pushing all the time.

In the end, I lost 8 lbs without ever giving up a food group or a meal. My weight hasn't fluctuated more than 3 pounds in the last 8 months and I now enjoy knowing that my clothes fit all the time. I feel better and I am rarely 'hangry'. I am a lot more accepting of myself as I feel really good about the changes that I've made. I am 100% positive that my changes are sustainable and quite honestly now that I have practiced these habits for such a long time I find it hard NOT to do them. Plenty of days I have rationalized why I don't have time to do my workout only to find myself on the mats getting in sets between loads of laundry and stripping sheets off beds.

I just started my own new habit upon returning from vacation and I have a recipe for success. I created the habit and have a way of checking in with that habit daily. In two or three weeks, that habit will be mine and I will hardly have to think about it again. I'll just do it. Freedom is what the Habit Project is all about. You learn the recipe, the procedure and then you practice it until you own it.

Note from Amber: for a limited time, Sean and I are enrolling for our 12 Week Habit Project On-Ramp exclusively on iPhone/iPad via an app designed for programs like ours. To learn more and claim your spot, go here: Habit Project On-Ramp

For the past 8 months, Sean Flanagan and I have been running our latest community and coaching program the Habit Project'. The results have been really cool ' people who felt like they were previously spinning their wheels or backsliding in their health and fitness journey have been steadily moving forward creating the habits that support their goals.

The approach is super simple' and that's why it works so well. We harness the power of community and coaching support to maximize success with the small, day to day habits that impact our bodies and our health… one habit at a time.

Within the Habit Project, each small team supports one another in the systematic implementation of new behaviors, focusing on one habit for two weeks, before moving onto the next.

I'm really excited, because today I get to announce a new way to get started with the program. It's called the 12 Week Habit Project On-Ramp and it's our first group that will take place exclusively on an app for programs like ours. For now, this app is exclusively available on iPhones (and iPads).

Here are some reasons why you may want to check this out:

1) Sean and I mapped out the habits that we think are the most foundational. We've found some habits work great for newer people and some habits work better if you have some more time in the program first. So after observing how different habits have worked with our groups in the last 8 months, we outlined the 6 habit sequence that we think will have the greatest impact for helping you create a strong habit foundation and seeing the most immediate changes in your health and fitness.

2) You don't need to be on Facebook. Oh believe me, I know how distracting Facebook can be. With the app, the only things to do and the only notifications you'll receive will be related to your participation in the program. This will allow you to participate more in the program ' on your terms ' without getting sucked into the usual Facebook nonsense and distractions.

3) You start with other Habit Project newbies. The experience and support of our Habit Project members is invaluable, but it can be scary for some new people to join an established group as one of the few new people. With this program, you'll know you're starting off on the same foot as everyone else.

If the 12 Week Habit Project On-Ramp sounds interesting to you, check it out here:

12 Week Habit Project On-Ramp

This is our first ever group on the app so I have no idea how long spaces will remain. Technically, enrollment is open through July 8th. But if this group sells out, enrollment will be closed until we decide on the start date for the next on-ramp.

Ok, ok, sorry for the cheesy title.

Several years ago, before I started Go Kaleo, I entered a contest run by Women’s Health Magazine called ‘Fittest Friends’. I submitted a picture (along with a couple hundred other women) and there was a public vote on the pictures. I actually won the public vote, kind of by a landslide. But when the celebrity panel of judges decided on a Grand Prize winner from among the top ten vote-getters, they actually chose another entrant. It was an interesting experience (you can read my blog post about it here). Very shortly after, I started my Go Kaleo blog and facebook page. The Fittest Friends contest was actually one of the impetuses for creating this movement. It was pretty obvious to me that the public was hungry for a different “face of fitness”, and I wasn’t seeing it provided by the fitness industry monoliths, so I decided to start it myself.

In the years since, I’ve seen some amazing shifts in the industry. I like to think that I, and others like me (like James Fell, Disrupt Your Diet, Sean Flanagan and others) had a hand in bringing about that change. While shame-based advertising is still the ‘normal’, there’s a powerful groundswell happening, and more and more fitness and health professionals are calling out that shaming and creating a new standard, of self-compassion, compassion for others, and joyful self care.

It Cosmetics is running a video contest with the theme ‘Your Most Beautiful You’. With the memory of the Fittest Friends competition, I see an opportunity to bring this message of self compassion to the beauty industry. Help me do it. Please ‘like’ and share this video! Lets shift the thinking. Makeup not as disguise to blend in, but as self-expression to stand out. And on a deeper level, a message that who you are as a unique individual is important and worthy of expression, and when you value the qualities that make you YOU, people who are looking for those qualities will be drawn to you. It can start with something simple like the way you do your eyeshadow, but the more you honor and express your authentic self, the easier it will get. And over time, you will find yourself growing and thriving, speaking out in ways you never thought you could, recognizing how valuable your time and passions are, and you will begin to effect those around you – and the world.

This video is about makeup, yes. But it’s about so much more as well. People thought I was crazy when I started my blog, but look what happened. So, you may think this video is crazy, but lets see what we can DO. Please like and share. Join the revolution. Take up space. Be #partofthesolution #VoteItGirl

Click here to see (and like, and share) my video.

Thank you friends!

Yes, I used science as a verb there. And when I say I ‘learned to science’, what I mean is I learned to read and understand a scientific study, I learned to think critically and apply the rules of critical thinking to the information I was consuming, and I learned how to tell a credible source from a thinly veiled sales pitch disguised as ‘news’.

We are creatures driven by fear. Marketers take advantage of that and make us fear…well, anything and everything. And then when we’re nice and afraid, they handily provide a solution to those fears, a product you can buy that will protect you. The ‘Organic and Natural’ guru scares the bejeezus out of you with gruesome tales of rats with tumors from GMOs (and the subsequent green juice detox sales pitch), while the conservative talk radio host fills you with dread at the looming fiscal Armageddon (and then offers you the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to invest in gold! Gold!). Like pretty much everyone else, I’ve fallen victim to this form of stealth marketing, in fact I probably still do now and then, even though I’ve gotten MUCH much better at recognizing it.

So, without further ado, here are 5 things I used to be afraid of, until I learned how to science.

1. The Government

Have you heard the rumors that ebola was invented by the Government as a population control device with the ultimate goal of rounding us all up into FEMA camps? Yeah, I never got quite THAT deep, but there have been times in my life where I’ve gotten a little paranoid and conspiracy minded. It was actually kind of gratifying thinking that the government cared enough about me that it wanted to destroy my health and livelihood and be all up in my business.

I imagined I was much more important than I really am, and that made me feel good about myself. It also gave me the (false) sense that I had Special Knowledge that not everyone was privy to. Turns out, though, that The Government has bigger things to worry about, and actually would prefer I be a healthy and functional member of society, because then I can pay taxes. And really, The Government could give a rats ass about what I text to my husband to bring home from the grocery store. For real, yo.

2. Big Pharma

The Pharmaceutical industry is certainly powerful and profitable. But it’s not trying to make/keep me sick. Big Pharma has never forced a pill down my throat. It HAS, however, produced medicines that have improved my quality of life, and actually SAVED my life a couple times over. Could there be better oversight? Sure. Is there a seamy underbelly of the industry? I imagine so. Is Big Pharma a monster waiting to snare me and force me to become addicted to a hundred different pills? Uh…no.

Nowadays, I’m actually much more concerned by the far less regulated supplement and ‘natural health’ industries, which are free to sell any number of untested, unproven magic concoctions at rather extraordinary prices, unburdened by the kind of regulation and oversight that the pharmaceutical industry is subject to. “Don’t buy the medicine pill, buy my snake oil pill instead” the supplement marketers bark at me from the internet. As if.

 
3. GMOs

Oh, the fearmongering about GMOs abounds! And I found myself ensnared in it. But the more I learned about the science of biotechnology, and more importantly the potential benefits, the less worried I became, until one day I found myself wistfully hoping that Big GMO would hurry up and invent a drought-resistant mango tree that I could grow in my Northern California back yard. Wouldn’t that just be the bee’s knees?

Oh yeah, and that ‘study’ with the terrible images of rats riddled with tumors supposedly from GMOs? It was retracted. It was later republished, but the (well earned) damage to Seralini’s credibility had been done. And then I fell in with a crowd that reads science journals and websites like http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/ and https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ (neither of which sell essential oils on their sites – in fact they don’t sell anything) and after that I just couldn’t bring myself to live in terror any more.

4. Skyrocketing Cancer Rates

Who WOULDN’T be terrified at the ever increasing rates of cancer we’re constantly hearing about? Is it our food? Something in our environment? Is The Government running secret population control experiments on us? Best to eliminate every chemical from our lives and spend all our money on pure clean chemical free food and personal-care products, right? I mean people are dropping like flies over here!

Except when I learned how to find and read actual studies, imagine my surprise at learning that cancer rates aren’t skyrocketing. They’re not even increasing. In fact, they’ve declined slightly. What? But all the websites/magazines/diet gurus/essential oil marketers led me to believe cancer was skyrocketing. If they were wrong about that, I wonder what else they were wrong about.

5. Chemicals

“OMG did you know [insert food producer] puts [insert scary-sounding chemical] into their [insert food product] They’re pumping us full of chemicals and we wonder why cancer rates are increasing!” I admit, this line reeled me in more than a little. I filled my shopping cart, both in the grocery store and online, with ‘natural’, ‘organic’, ‘this-free’ and ‘that-free’ products, and emptied my wallet into the pockets of Big Organic and Big Placebo. I was a Natural Mom, dammit, and that made me safe. And better than everyone else. Right? All in an effort to protect my family from the deadly chemikills. Except that I learned how to science, and began to realize that everything is chemicals, and that a lot of those scary sounding chemicals the marketers were telling me were dangerous were actually things like salt. And vitamins. And vinegar.

Every substance on earth has a chemical name, including the air we breath and the water we drink and the compounds that form the tissues of our bodies. Being a chemical doesn’t make something bad. Everything is chemicals. And being natural doesn’t make a chemical safe. Arsenic is natural. Snake venom is natural. Diptheria and measles and tetanus are natural. Oh yeah, and being man-made doesn’t make something dangerous. Science takes the active compound from a natural substance, isolates and refines and standardizes it, tests it and regulates it and makes it safer and more effective, and turns it into a medicine that can save or improve lives. This is not a bad thing, yo.

—

Science is a good thing. And learning how to critically evaluate the information you consume can be one of the most empowering things you can do for yourself. You don’t have to actually be a scientist to be able to recognize a credible source of information. You just need to know how to evaluate an argument and determine if it is strong and based on verifiable evidence, or if it is weak and based on flawed logic. This skill can be applied to all sorts of information, not just science – it can be applied to political rhetoric and cultural establishments and religious dogma.

Want a reader friendly place to start? Check out the Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments.

And there’s also some of my other posts on this topic:

Cognitive Dissonance
The Straw Man
Gaslighting

I sat down for and interview with Coach Cox on Saturday, and we had a GREAT discussion. We covered quite a bit including strength training, recognizing disorder in Diet Culture, and establishing new habits to support fat loss. Be sure to check out Coach Cox’s website here, and you can watch the video below.

Hey guys! Just wanted to let you know that I will be chatting LIVE with Justin over at CoachCox.com this Saturday June 13th. You can even leave a question in the suggestion box on the registration page and hopefully we’ll have a chance to answer it. Just click here to read more and sign up to listen. It’s gonna be a blast!

I don’t think I’ve ever been referred to as ‘world-renowned’, but I kinda like it!

Guest post by my coaching partner, Sean Flanagan

Something I hear people say from time-to-time in defense of extreme 30-day-type diets is that they help you create healthy habits.

This is perhaps the most ass-backwards things I've ever heard.

Creating new and sustainable healthy habits is about incrementally adding positive changes on top of what you already do.

On the other hand, trying to create 'new healthy habits' by removing a large selection of food choices would be like quitting your job so that you'll be able to create the habit of going to the gym.

Well yeah' if you don't have much else to do, then sure it'll be relatively easy to start working out.

But you wouldn't have really created a lasting habit for exercise.'? You didn't find a way to make it work with your life. You created a temporary artificial context that made it happen by default.

Similarly' well OF COURSE you'll eat more fruits, vegetables, and lean protein if you avoid beans, dairy, grains, sugar, and perhaps other foods. You have to eat SOMETHING, right?

But this isn't the same as creating new habits for eating more fruits, more veggies, or more protein ' it's another temporary artificial context that makes these things happen nearly by default.

When the time comes sooner or later for you to return to a less restrictive diet, you will likely find you have not truly developed the habits of integrating these foods into your diet. You didn't practice getting more veggies in in combination with your favorite and regular recipes ' you practiced how to get more veggies when doing a super-restrictive diet.'? Not the same thing.

Maybe I'm wrong.'? Maybe you personally have the potential to make the habit changes stick.'? So let's look at what is at risk other than a month wasted and healthy habits not formed.

For starters, cultivating the habit of being fearful of totally safe foods after 30 days of people telling you how 'toxic' they are.'? So I guess maybe there is a habit-change component to these diets' but it's not a good one.'? It's often reported that these types of dietary challenges acted as a catalyst to a full blown eating disorder.

Similarly, this period of internalizing this narrative of 'these foods hurt a lot of people' or 'these foods cause inflammation' and you make yourself more prone to suffering negative consequences due to the nocebo effect.

The nocebo effect is similar to the placebo effect in that one's beliefs impact the reaction experienced. Whereas the placebo effect causes positive outcomes ('I took this pill and my knee is all better! What do you mean it was just sugar? Impossible!'), the nocebo effect causes negative outcomes ('Ever since I learned how inflammatory grains are, my stomach is hurting a lot more!').

It doesn't necessarily stop at the nocebo effect though. If on a diet that eliminates dairy for an extended period of time, our bodies start to down-regulate production of the enzyme needed for digestion, which can then lead to discomfort upon reintroducing dairy products.

In other words, these diets that are allegedly about helping you 'uncover' sensitivities can actually CREATE sensitivities.

Side note: if you believe an elimination diet could be beneficial for you to uncover a dietary trigger for a condition you have, ask your doctor for a referral to see a Registered Dietitian.'? Elimination diets require the clinical expertise of a Registered Dietitian ' not fad diet gurus.

One last negative consequence to consider, though I'm sure there are dozens more, is what type of attitudes do you think you'll develop about the 'approved' foods' If every time you want ice cream you're force feeding yourself a sweet potato, how positively are you going to view that sweet potato' I'm gonna guess on day 31 you're never going to want to see a sweet potato again.

So far we've talked about why viewing a restrictive diet as a way to create new healthy habits is misguided and also the very serious risks long term of these types of diets.'? So what do we do to create positive changes?

• Simply focusing on ADDING the new behaviors ' not randomly abstaining from other habits in hopes that good ones will fall in place.'? Let's literally just focus on adding in the good ones!'? The most direct way to eat more vegetables: focus on eating more vegetables.
• Build those behaviors on top of things you already do ' for nutrition changes, this is relatively straightforward.'? Examples: a salad every day with lunch, pairing your favorite pasta dish with two different types of vegetables, adding a banana to your toast and peanut butter.'? This stuff isn't fancy ' it just works. You don't need a list of 20 foods to avoid, you just need to add something you want to do on top of something you already do.
• Focus on ONE change at a time ' the fewer changes you focus on at any given time, the greater your chance for success. Zero would be a crappy number to focus on, so by default that gives us one as a pretty damn good choice.
• Surround yourself with like-minded people who are focused on creating healthy habit changes without succumbing to restrictive fad diets.'? Amber and I created this community online with the Habit Project, where people work on becoming strong, confident, and healthy working on one habit at a time. In real life, you can focus on making sure to spend more time with people focused on adding positive behaviors rather than creating restrictive behaviors.

I hope this article helped to outline why short term diets are not only a poor approach towards creating positive changes but also have a high potential of being counter-productive.'? Likewise, I hope you're now clearer on what to do instead.

Talk soon,

Sean

Sean Flanagan is a fitness & nutrition coach helping people implement habit-based strategies for lasting fat loss. In addition to co-running coaching programs with Amber, they have they've also co-written the free download '21 Habits for Lasting Fat Loss', which you can download HERE: http://seanflanaganwellness.com/21habits