If You Diet & You Don’t Know It, Clap Your Hands (Read This Post)

NOTE: This is not an advertisement for a typical weight-loss solution gimmick that will make you lose weight fast and then gain it all back. It is an explanation of the psychology of eating as I have observed in my own life, paired with the teachings from my reading of the book, Intuitive Eating, as well as my success in following those teachings.

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You know what’s crazy is how hard it can be to detect dieting patterns when you have been doing them for so long. What threw me for the biggest loop is that the dieting mentality can be present even when you are not on a self-proclaimed “diet.” Even when you do not consciously say you are only going to allot yourself a set number of calories, or eliminate a certain food or food group, or anything rigid, you can still be dieting.

How often have you told yourself you can’t have cake, only to end up eating the entire thing and feeling guilty? THAT’S DIETING.

The big diets are almost easier to escape from because they are so clear-cut; but it is the smaller, more hidden tendencies that are the most difficult to locate and eliminate.

When I decided that I wanted to stop dieting and just nourish my body according to how it feels, I had no idea that it would be such a long road doing so. It’s a road that I am still on, but i am much farther along than I have been for a long time, and that is why I felt this post was worth sharing at this time.

What kept holding me back from reaching my goal of intuitive eating were my deeply-rooted beliefs that I had to be a perfect eater. I filled my Instagram feed with “fitspiration” accounts depicting only scanty portions of mostly vegetables all day long, and let them convince me that if I wasn’t eating this way, I was “cheating, wrong, bad, fat, disgusting, a failure.”

cheating. wrong. bad. fat. disgusting. a failure. <<< I don’t like these words. These words are arbitrary and unfair, and they distorted my perception of myself because I always came to associate myself with them. I was a failure in my own eyes because I never had a “perfect” day of eating. My standards were so bloody effing high that it was nearly impossible to uphold them, and when I would deviate from them I would feel so upset that it would encourage me to eat WORSE. “I am already fat, so I’m just going to eat like a fat person would.” Sometimes this impulse wouldn’t even be conscious, it was so deeply rooted–I don’t recall ever thinking those words in my head, but that sentiment was definitely there. It seems easy to see where the cycle begins when this story is on paper, but it is much more difficult to detect when you are trying to stay afloat somewhere in the middle of all of it.

 {By the way, I refuse to post sample diet information on this blog because I never want a reader to become obsessed with an arbitrary sample meal plan and believe that this is the “ideal” way to eat. Disordered eating revels in fake standards, so I refuse to feed you unhealthy goals that I fed myself upon for so many years.)

Am I eating kale because I like kale, or because I am telling myself I have to eat kale?

Whenever I would come back from a run in the morning, I would start to feel a little stressed because I thought that I had to eat very little of very “clean” food in order to not ruin all of the work I had done during my run. Because I became so obsessed with eating these rather bland, loveless and flavorless foods, all I wanted were different foods, but I pretty much forced myself to eat the “healthy” food. I remember often being full but forcing myself to keep eating the egg whites or whatever it was, because I was afraid that I would be tempted by more indulgent foods if I didn’t fill up (or stuff myself even) on low-calorie and unsatisfying foods. How stupid is that!!!!! Here I am trying to lose weight, and I am eating out of fear, not out of hunger. Talk about not listening to my body’s signals!

This week, however, since coming back from coaching at running camp with a bunch of thin, healthy, and HAPPY teenage girls who at least SEEMED to eat whatever they wanted and didn’t worry or obsess about food, I thought I would give their method a try. I experienced coming back from a run and wanting a piece of the banana bread I had baked before I left for camp.

My emotion in wanting this banana bread was unique. I did not feel an obsessive, “I really want to eat a huge piece of that naughty banana bread because it is going to taste ooooohhhhh so good,” which the eating disorder typically made me feel about sweet foods. Instead, I had a rather emotionless desire for this banana bread. “Hmm,” I thought, “I think I would like a taste of that banana bread. I’m not sure if I’ll want to finish the whole slice since my mom cut them kind of big, but that sounds good to me right now. It is fine for me to eat this since I did exercise and I need not worry about its macronutrient content.”

Can you notice how much less urgent this second voice is? How less demanding and deprived the voice sounds? The second voice is the voice of true hunger and intuitive eating, while the first voice is that of a dieter. The dieter wants to cheat on the diet, while the intuitive eater wants to sample a lot of different foods and enjoy them because they are all pleasing to taste, and not because they have a certain nutritional content.

This is not the banana bread, but it is some dank French toast which is just as good

And guess what the best part is. When I had the banana bread, I was very satisfied. I spread a little butter on it and heated it up, and I was astonished to find that I was satisfied before I had even eaten that much.

Do note that everyone’s satisfaction is based upon activity level, metabolic rate, and length of time since last eating; so never feel like you are “BAD” because you finished something, as long as you ate it because you were still hungry and wanted it. Never feel guilty for wanting something because you think you “shouldn’t have it.” That is dieting. Let all foods be neither good nor bad, and the guilt will go away. All that will be left are you and your stomach, and IT can tell you what it really wants, rather than that crazy voice in your head.

Have your cake, eat it too, enjoy it, be done and maybe some day not even want it because you are not deprived!!

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I would absolutely love to hear responses to this. It is kind of a long post, but hopefully you get the idea and feel encouraged to STOP THAT DIET MENTALITY!