Why, you might ask, would I do something so crazy as to give up dieting? Why would I decide to just "let myself go"? Here's why.
- There is a ton of evidence that yo-yo dieting, and perhaps even weight loss in general, is worse for one's health than is just being fat. (See this post on Alas (a Blog) for just a taste of the truth.)
- Diet after diet after diet after diet after diet, and the results were always the same: temporary weight loss followed by out-of-control binge-ing and horrible guilt and sometimes purging and eventually the regaining of the weight I had lost plus a good bit more. It was making me bigger.
- The most unhealthy relationship I have ever had with food was when I was the closest I have ever been to my "ideal" weight. Yes, I was able maintain, at least for a few months, a weight of only five pounds above my "ideal" weight, but only if I a) restricted myself to a 1000 calorie a day diet, and b)exercised vigorously (high impact aerobics, jogging) for sixty to ninety minutes a day six days a week. The feelings of desperation I had when near a piece of cake back then are enough to remind me that what I was doing was NOT normal.
How has giving up dieting, America's favorite pastime, changed my life?
- Now that I have given up dieting and legalized all foods, I no longer feel those out-of-control cravings for cake, donuts, etc. I have actually had to throw away sweets that went bad because I don't feel the need to eat them. That NEVER would have happened before.
- Two years since giving up dieting, I am now able to enjoy salads without having flashbacks of starvation. I eat things like cucumbers and broccoli and black beans (You knew that was coming, didn't you?) because I love them, not because they are required diet fare.
- I now eat when I am hungry, not when the diet book says I can eat, and not when I have some extra calories/points/fat grams/carbs to which I am entitled.
- I am learning to recognize when I am full. I am learning to stop when my body says I've had enough, not when Weight Watchers/Dr. Phil/my father/the carb police say I have used up all my calories/points/fat grams/carbs.
- I am finally able to separate issues of health from issues of weight and to choose fruits and veggies and whole grains because they taste good and are good for my body -- not because they might make me smaller.
- My children are learning things that I didn't learn (or that I knew and forgot years ago?) until my thirties. At dinner the other day, my son said, "I'm not going to finish this strawberry because I'm full. My body is saying I had enough." He can stop mid-strawberry! One day I want to be that in tune with my body.
- I move my body because it feels good to do so and because it's good for my health, not because it burns calories. I now know that I love to walk, practice yoga, play tennis, swim, dance, mow the yard, and garden. I used to do many of those things as a way to punish myself, not for fun.
Sure, I have a long way to go to undo the damage I've done to myself in a ridiculous quest to be something I'm not. I'm getting there. Despite being big and looking the farthest from "normal" I've ever looked, this is without a doubt the most normal I have ever been.
2 comments:
I give you kudos for that. I tried to give up dieting (you are right, dieting is as much a drug as anything you have to "give up") but had the opposite problem. I let all foods be legal and figured, ala geneen roth, that at first I would gorge on "forbidden" foods and then, as soon as I realized they were not forbidden anymore, I'd only eat them when I wanted and be able to stop. In 6 months of giving up dieting, I gained 15 lbs. At that point, I could have gone longer to see if this was a temporary condition but I didn't. I got back on the diet train. But oh I do wish it wasn't always on my mind!
Oh and Dr. Phil? Yech!
Oh, yeah, I've definitely gained weight. I don't get weighed anymore, and there was a pregnancy thrown in there, too, so it's hard to say how much I've gained. But I do know that I am wearing the same clothes I wore this time last year. I wanted the pounds to just fall away, too, but eventually I left the Geneen Roth camp and went to the Overcoming Overeating camp, which says don't make weight loss the goal. Very scary initially.
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