Actively pursuing weight loss involves mental and physical restriction, and that comes with consequences. I can’t think of a single person who lost weight through restriction and then lived happily ever after at the new weight with food never being an issue again. That’s the dream, but it never plays out. We always regain or turn to more and worse restriction to maintain. Food becomes such a big issue when it feels scarce or forbidden.
My advice (and what actually works for me) is instead of pursuing weight loss, pursue AWESOME. If you want to feel confident, happy, strong, fit, connected, loved, or peaceful, go at those directly. We use “goal weight” as a stand-in for everything we want in life, and it’s a flimsy worthless stand-in.
If I want to feel confident, I challenge myself by stepping up, trying new skills, learning new things, and seeing how I improve, seeing how I can handle it. If I want to be happy, I do things that make me genuinely happy, undereating is not one of those, but spending time outdoors, spoiling the dog, laughing with my husband, and binge-watching television shows in my jammies rank pretty high. You get the idea. The big revelation for me is that if I want to be genuinely strong, fit, and healthy, I have to EAT. Eating gives me the energy to live an active life and to have a healthy body, mind, and metabolism. All restricting my food ever got me was a cranky, weak, binge-prone brain fog. It never even delivered sustainable weight loss, not once. I was generally heavier when I was dieting because I was hungrier and more obsessed with food, plus my metabolism was a lot slower, so not exactly a winning combo.
Currently, I eat whatever I want and don’t worry about it, which I realize is completely unacceptable advice to a diet mind. If someone had suggested that at the start of my journey, my head would have exploded. I wanted and needed structure, otherwise I’d overthink until my brain burned. Having just a little structure meant less thinking and more freedom. So, think about a general framework that you know feels good as far as gentle nutrition, meal timing, and foods you enjoy. Then don’t be too much of a nut about it. Stay flexible and pay attention to how the way you’re eating makes you feel. Notice if your meals are mentally and physically satisfying (mental satisfaction is important). Let go of more rules and give your body more trust as you can. Let go of the weight focus and increase the awesome focus as you can. If you keep heading in that direction, you’ll get there.
I’ve been heavier on the scale and leaner than I am now. I’ve also been lighter on the scale with more body fat. I’ve been this very weight having starved myself for months to get here (didn’t stay long those times), and I’ve been this weight after prolonged binge eating (due to prolonged restriction). So it’s not the number on the scale that matters. You can be just fine or suffering mightily at the same weight. How you treat yourself is what matters. Approach your eating with kindness and curiosity, keep your sense of humor, keep the emphasis on how you want to feel, and you’ll have a much better outcome than if you’re prioritizing a scale number.
That was the case for me, @Jess. I was still very focused on weight and body comp, so I was still subtly restricting all over the place, which then made my eating more reactive and less in line with my actual needs. I think that's all pretty normal for anybody learning (or relearning) intuitive eating after years of restrictive eating. Restriction can be difficult to even recognize, but once you're seeing it for what it is, it becomes easier to say, "I am hungry now. I do want bread with that. I believe I will have some more." It's no longer the ongoing quest to always eat as clean or as little as possible. Eat enough up front. Be satisfied. Stop thinking about food altogether. Then things get interesting. I forget to eat part of my lunch. I don't want the rest of that. I'm not interested in dessert. It's not because I'm consciously eating less to control my weight but because I'm no longer hungry. I'm not even thinking about it. That's such a new experience, to not always be heading off what I considered the pesky/faulty/deceptive desire to eat more. Turns out that urge goes completely away when I'm consistently eating until totally satisfied. Who knew?
This didn't result in some kind of weight gain armageddon where things felt out of control and I was miserable and disappointed in myself. Restriction has made me feel that way, like I could eat the whole world and keep eating and gaining until I exploded, so I'd better not trust myself. Satisfaction is the opposite. I'm content. Everything is good. My mind is calm. Food is a non-issue. This has been an amazing discovery. It's the thing that keeps me from ever wanting to diet or lose weight again. I used to be so tempted, by others who were dieting, by the latest book, by health news. My brain would latch onto any reason to justify restriction, but now having experienced life without it, there's nothing to go back to. I'm happier here. This food peace, and body confidence, and ease in the world is what I was trying to achieve the whole time I was manipulating my food and weight. Stopping is what actually gave it to me.
I think there's this underlying message when we're trying to eat less and lose weight that, "I'm not ok. I need to fix this." That's different from genuine self-care. It's ok to want to take care of yourself and feel your best. You don't have to be disappointed in yourself and ashamed of your body in order to change. Again, newsflash! LOL That kind of drama and pressure didn't do anything good for my mindset or eating habits. It just keeps the struggle front and center.
Hmmm... so maybe my version of happy eating or intuitive eating still has elements of old thinking. And I am probably still having too many 'overeating' episodes so maybe that is why I am still gaining...? Apart from maybe having a broken body (which is another story)...
If I think about it, maybe I still let myself get too hungry at times, still undereat during the day a little, ignore hunger too much (then therefore ignore fullness), still have hang ups about snacking.... all of this subtle stuff adds up to rebounding still? Which subsequently still feels like disordered eating... ? Ergh... still got a ways to go.
It was a bit of a revelation to me that eating "whatever I want" didn't actually mean stuffing myself full of candy and fast food and never eating vegetables again. That's not what my body wants. That's not what I want. I want to feel great, be healthy and fit, and enjoy my food. I don't want any rules or drama, but, wow, those are clingy. The one that tripped me up the most was the idea that I could be a happy, intuitive eater if I lost weight doing it or stayed below a certain weight. I know, the irony! I basically made non-dieting my new weight loss scheme, set up a paradigm where, like any other diet, it may or may not "work." Trusting my body and eating to appetite is an acceptable approach unless I gain past a certain weight (I called it my "oh, shit" weight), and then restriction becomes necessary or justified. Anybody see the problem there? Diet thinking, diet threat, impending diet, guilt, shame, mental restriction. Nobody eats "normally" under those circumstances. What we're experiencing in that fearful state is not a reflection of what truly eating intuitively or trusting your body can be. The real deal is far more relaxed and effective than my whacked out conditional diet version, but it took me a couple of years to tease them apart.
Something that helped tremendously was becoming unconditionally ok with myself. Not, "I'm ok if..." I'm always ok. I always deserve to be treated with respect and kindness. I always deserve to eat when I'm hungry and rest when I'm tired. I take care of my body like it's a child or beloved pet. There's never a point where it's ok to become abusive or neglectful. Getting this through my "no pain, no gain," willpower and discipline mind took time and effort, but it's an extremely worthwhile pursuit. Being a jerk to yourself is never going to solve your problems or make you happy. There's never a scenario in which it becomes a good idea.
So, with that out of the way, how do I treat myself? That's when things really began to change. It was a mental shift more than anything.
I love the sound of this Skwigg. It sounds so EASY! and FREE! But when I keep putting on weight, it makes it hard to trust - both the process and myself. It's not positively reinforcing the effort... if you know what I mean...
How I want to feel? - I want to feel free to eat, I don’t want to battle my cravings, but I don’t like the way my body feels when I eat what I want. I want to feel energetic, not bloated, tired and achy like I do. Right now I just want instant pleasure from food, but my body is suffering. I’m hoping that one day I will be able to balance feeling good and enjoying food.
There is so much goodness in this post. And while I'm not "there" yet, I'm finding myself taking this non-scale-based approach more and more. For me, focusing on weight loss or weight means: over exercising, under eating, deprivation, being cranky, feeling burnt out, messed up hormones. It doesn't feel good to run myself into the ground (both literally and figuratively). It doesn't feel good to eat "just enough". It doesn't feel good to say "no" when my kids ask me to play with them because I've exhausted myself with exercise. So now I don't - or at least I try not too. Now I try to remember to I ask myself what feels good instead of asking "will this make me leaner/smaller".