Losing weight as a resolution for 2023, a bad target?
After eating a little too much turkey over the holiday season, many Montrealers decide to go on a diet and hit the gym to lose weight. Author, speaker and consultant Edith Bernier, who specializes in fatphobia, thinks this is missing the mark.
According to data from the Association pour la santé publique du Québec (ASPQ), more than 90% of people who make an attempt to lose weight will have regained their initial weight within five years. “The diet industry is exploding because it doesn't work,” says the author. To counter this “yo-yo effect”, she recommends “revisiting our relationships with these things, that they are less restrictive, less punitive, and more fun”.
“Be active, certainly eat a balanced diet, but because it’s good for you,” she suggests, rather than by looking for thinness, a quest that would generally end up disappointing.
Eat better
“The culture of dieting and fatphobia doesn’t take vacations,” says Edith Bernier about the feeling of having eaten too much that comes after the time of Holidays. She also reminds those concerned that at the end of the day, “it’s seven, eight days at the most; there is sometimes a small weight gain, but it tends to put itself back on its own”.
To avoid overeating next year, she advises starting right away by stopping deprivation. “If you deprive yourself all year, it's sure that you will stuff yourself at Christmas,” she says. Conversely, “when prohibitions fall, temptation also falls”, she adds.
She also doesn't recommend eating just anything, but rather following your body rather than subjecting it to rigid constraints. In summary, it would be necessary “to get out of the logic of always having to finish your plate or to eat at fixed times”. Rather, the author suggests listening to your hunger and following your instincts. She adds that a “baby stops eating when he is no longer hungry; Why wouldn't we just do the same as an adult?».
Move more
According to the latest data from the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec (INSPQ), more than half of the population has a sedentary lifestyle. The World Health Organization (WHO), meanwhile, warns that lack of physical activity increases the risk of death by 20% to 30%.
Lack of physical activity doesn’ is not to be taken lightly for Edith Bernier, who warns against the various diseases linked to a sedentary lifestyle. She invites people to move more, regardless of their age or weight: “Movement is good for everyone.”
Edith Bernier suggests approaching physical activity through the prism motivations that will last over time. To do this, she proposes “less severity, discipline and sacrifice” to focus on what seems to her the essential: having fun.
She encourages people who want to move more to seek a feeling of accomplishment or to do group activities so that sport is a game, rather than a constraint to which we must submit. “The important thing is to move,” she recalls. You have the right to change sports, to try things, to find what turns you on.”
