I want to lose weight!

Is this the first time you have decided to lose weight? Or have you already tried everything: high protein diet, low calorie diet, dissociated diet, food rebalancing, cabbage soup, food supplements... Do you know the yo-yo effect by heart?

And what if the key to feeling good in your body was actually listening to it, learning to be aware of the feeling of being hungry or of having eaten your fill, or learning to be connected to your emotions rather than" eating your emotions" (as says the French singer Jeanne Added*), and starting to be aware of your unconscious mechanisms and beliefs about food.

A report by ANSES (the French national agency for sanitary security for food, the environment and labor)** on "assessing the risks associated with dietary weight-loss practices", drawn up in 2010 by a committee of independent experts, presented the long-term ineffectiveness of weight-loss diets and the risks that they can affect our health in general.

Since this study, weight loss diets have been increasingly called into question. For example, professionals grouped within G.R.O.S.*** (a French think tank about Obesity and Overweight), promote a behavioral and cognitive approach to dietetics and eating. Under the chairmanship of Dr. Gérard Apfedorfer, psychiatrist, they note that dieting means putting oneself in a state of cognitive restriction (CR), i.e. trying to control one's diet by an effort of will, in the goal of losing weight or not gaining weight and that this effort is very difficult to maintain over time. The state of CR thus causes frustration if the diet is respected, guilt if it is not, and risks inducing weight gain or an inability to lose it.

From their point of view, all diets, balanced or not:

• Induce a weight regain often greater than the loss,
• Aggravate the medical complications linked to being overweight,
• Lead to low self-esteem reinforced by the repeated and almost systematic failure of each attempt to lose weight,
• Establish eating disorders or amplify them

Instead, they suggest:

• Treating cognitive restriction -i.e. helping to eat according to one's food sensations, of everything, without guilt,
• Recognize emotional pain and increase tolerance to emotional discomfort to deal with food impulsivity,
• Work on acceptance, self-esteem and self-affirmation.

Sources: *France Culture June 1st 2020 - **Agence Nationale de Sécurité Sanitaire de l’alimentation, de l’environnement et du travail - ***Groupe de Réflexion sur l'Obésité et le Surpoids