Emily's Story: It's All Downhill from Here

From time to time, I like to share a client experience to illustrate how Intuitive Eating can help you have a more trusting, peaceful and relaxed relationship with food and your body.

Recently, I was catching up with my former client Emily and she shared how different this holiday season already feels for her. With her permission, I’m sharing her story with you.

Emily’s Story: It’s All Downhill from Here
I remember very clearly my thoughts and fears around food that always surfaced at this time of year and talking to you about them when we were working together.

My October birthday had always triggered the “downhill” part of my year.

Starting with my birthday and continuing through New Year’s Eve, I would be diet-free.  

This meant giving myself special permission to eat without any restrictions for three and a half months before beginning a new diet on January 1.

Since I knew deprivation was just around the corner, I experienced a lot of Last Supper bingeing episodes during this time.

This year, I already feel such a major difference.

It no longer feels like this special time of year where I finally have an excuse to eat cake or candy. These things are always available to me now since I’ve stopped dieting and started giving myself unconditional permission to eat no matter what time of year it is.

It is such a freeing experience.

Unlike Any Birthday Before
On my birthday this year, there wasn’t any part of the day or the following weekend that I felt the need to “go for it” with my eating.

In years past, I would always eat until I was uncomfortably full on my birthday and often for a few days after as I polished off the leftover cake and other “special, rare treats.”

This birthday felt like my first big “test” of the season.

Having this new experience under my belt is so rewarding and it’s a testament to the power of Intuitive Eating, especially when paired with your expertise and gentle guidance. 

Peace with All the Pumpkin Things
Also this month, my roommate and I went to Trader Joe’s and bought a bunch of the fall snacks, all the pumpkin things.

It felt like a fall-treat buffet for the first few days. I was having so much fun trying all the new foods that I ended up eating more sweets than I usually do and felt a little sick.

I certainly wasn’t mad at myself for it. Instead, I viewed it as an informative experience.

I realized eating that amount of sweets didn’t feel very satisfying in my body so I may not want to do it again. And, I understood that since they were all new foods, it was normal for me to eat a lot of them right away.

As the days have gone by, unlike past years, I don’t feel out of control with all the fall treats or preoccupied with them. In fact, I forget we have a lot of the snacks we do!

This feels so completely different than when I was stuck in my restrict-binge cycle and it’s a huge relief to know I will not be starting another diet come New Year’s Day.

Every day, there is something new to learn and observe, but there hasn’t been a time in my life that I felt more at peace and at ease with food and my body. 

Are You a Pseudo-Dieter?

After years of jumping from one diet to the next and being a slave to the scale, Val hit rock-bottom.

Fed up with the weight-loss roller coaster and obsessing over every morsel she ate, she swore off dieting.

Yet, months after joining the "anti-diet" movement, she still shuns carbs, never eats after 7 p.m., and runs a few extra miles whenever she has dessert.

Val is a pseudo-dieter.

She genuinely believes she’s given up dieting, yet she continues to engage in dieting behaviors.

As a result, she still experiences many of the side effects of dieting, including feeling anxious when eating in social situations, intense food cravings, feeling out of control with her “trigger foods” (ice cream and chips), and feeling guilt, shame and anger when she thinks she’s eaten badly.

Deeply Ingrained
As with Val, the diet mentality can be so deeply ingrained—or hidden under the guise of “health" or "wellness”—that many of us “non-dieters” don’t realize we’re actually pseudo-dieting and that our restrictive eating behaviors make us vulnerable to the physical and psychological damage dieting causes.

Here are some more examples of pseudo-dieting: 

• Eating only “clean” or “whole” foods.
  

• Limiting carb, protein or fat grams regardless of what your body desires or needs.
  

• Compensating for eating “bad” foods by doing extra exercise, skipping your next meal, eating less tomorrow, or going on a detox.
  

• Eating at only certain times of the day despite your hunger level.
  

• Becoming vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, etc. for the sole (and often secret) purpose of losing weight.
  

• Putting on a “false food face” in public by eating what you think you should rather than what you really want (e.g., ordering the healthiest item on the menu, forgoing the bread basket, skipping dessert).
  

• Determining what you deserve to eat based on what you ate earlier in the day or if you exercised, rather than your hunger level.

Releasing the Diet Mentality
Just like an official diet program, pseudo-dieting disconnects you from your body inhibiting your ability to hear and honor the messages it’s sending you.

And, as I mentioned earlier, all restrictive eating, no matter how it’s labeled, leaves you vulnerable to the pitfalls of dieting, from binge eating and weight cycling to social withdrawal and a preoccupation with food.

If you want to heal your relationship with food and your body, you need to truly let go of the diet mentality and relearn how to nourish your body based on internal cues versus external rules.

As pseudo-dieting behaviors can be quite subtle and disentangling from diet culture can be very difficult (but not impossible!), it can be helpful to receive support and guidance. I’m here for you if you need me.

Source: Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program that Works.