• Supatra Tovar is a psychologist and dietitian who used to follow fad diets.
• She now helps clients change their mindset around food to help them lose weight in a healthy way.
• Her tips include changing what you're exposed to on social media.

A psychologist, registered dietitian, and pilates teacher who broke out of a cycle of yo-yo dieting shared with Business Insider her four tips for losing weight healthily and sustainably.

Supatra Tovar, author of "Deprogram Diet Culture: Rethink Your Relationship With Food, Heal Your Mind, and Live a Diet-Free Life," struggled with fad diets in her 30s. But now, at 52, she feels better than ever about her body.

She said changing her mindset was key to improving her diet.

1) Understand why diets don't work

"The first step to building a healthy mindset around dieting is really understanding how dieting actually works against our bodies," she said.

"We're really not designed to cut our calories in half, so the body goes into 'starvation mode.' You may lose weight in the short term, but it's deceptive," Tovar said. Extreme calorie restriction is typically unsustainable, so when we inevitably stop dieting, the body works to put the weight back on.

Tovar pointed to what is known as the set point theory, which supposes that the body tries to maintain a person's weight. It is thought to do this by slowing down the metabolism and allowing more energy to be stored as fat, research suggests. But experts don't agree on whether this set point can be reset to a high or lower level of body fat.

2) Set boundaries with unsupportive people

"There's always somebody in our lives who is telling us to diet or that we don't look good, pinching our fat, telling us to go exercise, or asking 'Do you really want to eat that?'" Tovar said.

Tovar recommended limiting the time you spend with them and surrounding yourself with people who are more positive and supportive. If that's not possible, try to create healthy boundaries around comments on food and appearance.

3) Delve inward

Tovar asks her clients to "delve inwards" to address their thoughts about food, first examining their childhoods to understand where their ideas may have come from.

"We pick up everything when we're kids, and model the behavior of adults. The messages that we get from our family — whether you had to clean your plate to 'earn' dessert, or your parents engaged in a lot of dieting — it all plays a part," Tovar said.

Next, she tells clients to "tune into" their hunger, to identify when they are eating mindlessly or emotionally, and when they're full. This helps people to practice "mindful" or "intuitive" eating, by acknowledging their cravings and eating according to their body's needs.

A big part of mindful eating, Tovar said, is not moralizing food by labeling them as "good" or "bad."

"We're just saying food is food, and allowing our bodies to eat what they want without judgment," she said. People will tend to gravitate towards healthier foods, she said.

However, experts say intuitive eating isn't suitable for everyone, particularly those who struggle with eating disorders. And Mark Schatzker, a nutrition writer, previously advised against including ultra-processed foods in an intuitive diet because the artificial flavors can trick the brain into wanting more.

4) Change what you're exposed to on social media

"You have to depopulate your social media feed from all of the content that is designed to make you feel terrible about yourself," Tovar said.

Disordered eating is often indirectly promoted on social media, through trends such as "what I eat in a day" videos and platforms pushing weight-loss ads, BI's Rachel Hosie previously reported.

Tovar recommended unfollowing any influencers, companies, and magazines that promote diet culture, and replacing them with "stuff that makes you feel good."

For her, this meant getting rid of diet-focused content and replacing it with "puppies and kittens and Kevin Bacon singing to his goats on his farm."

• Besides taking Mounjaro, a weight-loss drug, Jim Gaffigan found that gardening benefited his health.
• He said gardening encouraged him to eat healthier and helped him achieve his fitness goals.
• Incorporating more vegetables into the diet can increase happiness, according to a nutrition expert

Jim Gaffigan's hack to eating more greens is to grow them himself.

In an interview with Men's Health published on Tuesday, the comedian opened up about his weight loss.

"I've always been kind of a compulsive eater," he said in the magazine's "Eat Like" video segment. "The whole concept of eating healthy and living healthy is very foreign to me. It took a while for me to kind of climb on board that," he added.

Gaffigan, 58, said he decided to live healthier when he noticed his metabolism slowing.

"Big thing that made me eat healthier is I started gardening," he added. "That was a big change. Now I love it. I can achieve some fitness goals, believe it or not, puttering around the garden."

Gardening has also encouraged him to eat better. "Growing vegetables makes you more interested in consuming those vegetables, which makes you healthier, which makes you kind of look at what you're consuming, which makes fast food look like the crap that it is," he said.

Gaffigan posts his gardening projects on Instagram. In a July post, he gives his followers a tour of his garden, where he grows onions, cucumbers, beans, and artichokes.

Gaffigan, whose stand-up special "The Skinny" is out on Friday, also said he uses Mounjaro to help him lose weight. Mounjaro is the brand name for Tirzepatide, a prescription drug used to treat type 2 diabetes and manage weight loss.

"Most of our lives we've been told, Just control your appetite. Just stop being a fucking pig," he said. "The reality is, we can't. Maybe our brains are a little wonky or whatever. I think that in some ways, the appetite suppressants are this justification for people who have compulsive eating, that they're not weak — that some of it can be fixed."

Since his doctor suggested taking the drug two years ago, Gaffigan has lost 50 pounds. "I feel good," he told People. "I'm just grateful because it's such a better life."

A representative for Gaffigan did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.

Sneaking more greens in your diet

A way to sneak more greens into your diet is to try the 80/20 rule, where 80% of your food is healthy, and you can be more flexible with the other 20%.

BI's Rebecca Harrington tried the rule on her salad in August last year. She sneaked treats like rice, potato chips, cheese, and breadcrumbs into her salad bowl.

"It's hard to eat perfectly all the time, but trying to make the vast majority of foods that you eat nutrient-dense, whole ones is generally going to be effective," she wrote.

Naomi Whittel, a nutrition expert and author of the wellness book "Glow15," previously told Business Insider that another hack to increase vegetable intake is to add a handful of spinach when you're heating up leftovers or making a smoothie.

"As vegetables increase in the diet, happiness might be a change that is noticed before specific physical changes in the body, so I always tell people to consider eating vegetables an investment in happiness," she said.