Rhubarb Almond Muffins

Hi Again!

It’s been a minute, I know.  But in that minute, some exciting things have happened.  Things that will allow me to invest more time into the projects I’ve been dying to get off the ground…like, for one, keeping up with this blog, but also to really pursue what I feel like I was meant to do and live the dream of becoming fully self-employed.

To be honest, making a jump from a career under someone else’s management to running a business on my own is hella terrifying.  I’m confident in my skills as a dietitian, but when it comes to managing a business??….I’m over here scratching my head like wtf am I doing??  There’s a lot of uncertainty of what lies ahead.  I know there will be setbacks and challenges, and I hope there will be successes.  It’s in that space of uncertainty where I have a ton of questions, doubts and fears. 

The Grey

Making a jump from a life of chronic dieting and food rules is a jump into the unknown.  Food, eating, dieting is very often viewed as binary, or black and white.  Good and bad foods.  Healthy and unhealthy foods.  On a diet, off a diet. Success or failure.  We ignore or may not even notice anything else in between, which is a vast space with so many varying degrees of grey.  When that space is embraced and explored through a different lens, so much freedom can be found between the black and white, all-or-nothing mentality of what nutrition, health, food, body image and more have become.  The first step in changing the way you think about health and nutrition is to walk away from dieting and re-frame your mentality.  Or you can meander around and consider or just stand and listen, your choice.  The point is it’s an invitation to learn and follow the conversation. 

Fear of the Unknown

It’s normal to feel unsure, scared, apprehensive or curious at the thought of walking into an unknown gray space.  It’s human nature to fear the unknown.  It may be especially concerning the more years or decades you’ve been dieting.  These are all very normal feelings and its okay to feel that way.

One Big Illusion

We’ve been told for so long that if we want to lose or control our weight, we need to follow a diet.  We’ve been told if we want to eat the “right way,” we need to control what we eat.  We’ve been told that if we don’t follow the rules, we’ll be out of control.  Or maybe you’ve learned dieting can be a means to having control over some aspect in life.  A lot of the fear around quitting diets can come from the feeling of losing control.  All of this is an illusion.

Quitting diets and food rules can be hard and unloading years of dieting and how we’ve been taught to think and feel about food can be vulnerable.  Dieting and food rules can feel safe and comfortable because you know what to expect, you know what to do and you can feel as if you’re doing things right.  It is a false sense of control when you follow “the rules”.  When you diet, you aim for control over what is eaten, how much is eaten, how much you exercise, which may lead you to believe you are controlling the number on the scale or how your body looks.  And if you’re 100% perfect in control you expect to achieve the desired outcome, whether it be weight loss or some other desired goal.  But that feeling of control is fleeting because that tight grip inevitably loosens and maybe it lets go altogether.  At each turn or setback in the road where a rule was violated or control was lost, you are made to feel “out of control” and that feeling of being “out of control” is the illusion that makes you feel like a “failure” and takes a toll on your mental and physical well-being.  We’re told that once we’ve failed and if we want to continue to find success, we need to get back up again but with even tighter control.  But instead of getting back on and trying to control the wagon, ditch the wagon.  Actually, burn it.  It’s not you that’s out of control, it’s the f***ing wagon. 

No matter what stage you may or may not be at in the process of leaving the dieting world, whether it be hitting rock bottom and ready to let go completely or just considering the possibility of exploring the idea of leaving diets behind, stay on the path.  The road to dismantling a diet mindset varies person to person and is a process full of ups and downs with opportunities for experience and growth, which is the opposite of dieting where the expectation for progress is linear where setbacks feel shameful and can make you feel flawed. 

Freedom!

When you ditch the diet mindset, you eliminate the outcome of feeling like you’re a failure.  And you open yourself to a world where fumbling happens, and you know it’s okay.  It’s about understanding that everything is not perfect, and you accept that is doesn’t need to be.   It is a space that allows you to nourish and satisfy your body without judgement, where the goal is to gain knowledge at every step so you can learn to trust and listen to your body.  When you tune into your bodies’ own internal feedback system and use your intuition to guide you, you gain so much information.  And whether the outcome was expected or not, there is knowledge and value in the learning experiences.  This is the knowledge that will keep you moving forward and can set you free. 

Fears vs. Reality

Fear of Losing Control Around Food:

Think about the times where you’ve lost “control” around food or ate to the point of discomfort or binged or ate “bad” foods with great urgency and ferocity.  Were you restricting or putting limits on certain food or food types? Were you obsessing over food or when your next meal will be?  Were you feeling intense hunger? Were you craving a brownie but told yourself you didn’t deserve it?  The feeling of not being able to stop eating, the food obsession, intense hunger and cravings are normal responses to restriction.  When your body isn’t properly nourished, it feels it’s in starvation mode and needs to take control to survive.  Once your body knows and trusts that it is getting enough food, it learns it doesn’t need to be in starvation mode in order to survive and the intense feelings of hunger, extreme cravings and obsessive food thoughts will disappear.  When you remove the physical and mental restrictions around food and listen to and honor your inner physical and emotional cues, the “out of control” feeling simply is not a thing. 

Fear of Losing Control of Your Body:

A big part of the reason many people diet is to control their weight, how their body looks or the perception of their image.  How people view each other and judge each other is always an issue of how they view themselves.  So what are we afraid of?  It’s how we perceive and internalize how we think people are viewing us that feeds into our own insecurities.  We live a society where we are taught to care more about what others think and value more than what we think and value about ourselves.  There is no control over how people judge, but there is control over how we view ourselves.  Know that you are valuable and worthy regardless of your outside appearance, no matter what social media or friends or family have made you believe.  We need to start valuing ourselves more than how we look and start making our lives about more than body parts that need improved or fixed all for the sake of a praiseworthy body.  We are so much more than our physical appearance.  Ask yourself, how much value do I place on how my body looks?  What does weight say about my worth?  Do I know this to be true?  How do I know this?  How much time have I dedicated towards pursuing changing my body?  If I started focusing more on what’s inside of me rather than outside, what would that look like?  If thinness were not the societal ideal and no one cared about weight, how would you feel about my body? If no one cared or made comments on my weight, how would I feel about my body?  How do I talk about my body?  Is it in a positive, respectful manner? 

Our fatphobic society lives and breathes diet culture.  It’s constantly telling us we need to live in a smaller body because thinner is always better and it’s the answer to a happier better life.  We’re surrounded by messages that tell us directions for how to achieve that perfect, unattainable for most, thin body.  It places a fear in us that if we gain weight, we will hate our bodies, which often leads to mistreating them (i.e. excessive exercise, fad diets, food restriction, obsession with food, fitness, or the scale etc.).  So, when we do these so-called “healthy” things that we believe is the equivalent to “taking care of our bodies,” there is the belief and the hope that it will prevent us from gaining weight or becoming fat or there’s the hope that it will shrink our bodies.  The truth is we don’t have much control over the shape of our bodies.  Our bodies come in all shapes and sizes and for so many reasons other than just what we eat and how much we exercise.  We are not all meant to live in the same one-thin-sized-fits-all body that society and diet culture have demanded and have lead us to believe is worth pursuing.  Thinner is not always better and we are not all meant to live in the same thin body, nor should that be the expectation.  There is not one “look” that is better than the other.  And when we can accept the idea that pursuing perfection and the “ideal” body are BS, you can work towards accepting your own body and begin to build a relationship with your body through feelings of compassion rather than fear.    

Despite what we’re told, weight loss does not always equal health.  And our weight does not determine our health (link).  What affects our health is behaviors, not our weight (link).  When weight becomes the focus, intentional weight loss through restrictive and obsessive behaviors can actually impede our mental and physical health.  But when you feed your body regularly, honor your hunger, respect your fullness, allow yourself to choose pleasurable foods without guilt, honor your emotions without using food, respect your body, find movement that feels good rather than punishment, and fuel your body with lots of good nutrition to honor your health, you will find true health.  If you lose weight or don’t lose weight as a result of listening to your body and pursuing health, there’s nothing wrong with either scenario. 

So maybe you still want to try and lose weight.  Sure, you could try another diet.  Just know that diets almost always fail and result in regained weight, and there’s a chance to gain even more weight than was lost.  Several studies show intentional weight loss is not sustainable for more than two to five years for 95%+ of the studies’ populations.  People not only gained the lost weight back, but up to two-thirds gain even more weight.  Cycling weight loss efforts also usually result in yo-yoing weight, which is linked to negative health outcomes such as increased risk for cardiovascular disease, mortality and metabolic disorders (link), as well as other biological, psychological and emotional damages.

Your weight and your body have not really been in your control by following diet plans and rules.  Realize and remind yourself of this every time a doubt crosses your mind.  And without judgement get curious, ask questions about your thoughts on weight and weight loss. What was dieting costing me in the past?  Was the diet a solution to something?  What do I fear weight says about me?  What did I expect would come from a diet and what was the reality?  If weight simply played no role in my life, would I nourish my body differently and what would it do for my mental and emotional health?  Ask yourself what would happen if weight were gained?  What is it about weight gain that scares me?  What would happen if weight were lost?  What do I believe about weight loss and what is it about weight that I believe to be true?  What do I believe about health and weight?  Do I know these things to be true?  How do I know these things or what is the source?

Fear of Not Knowing How To Eat:

Understanding what a life around food looks like after saying goodbye to diets may feel intimidating and scary.  Especially if you’ve been following diet rules for a long period of time.  Diets have a false sense of safety.  They tell us what and what not to eat, when to eat, how much to eat and why we should or should not eat something.  A diet is one road and as long as you stay on the road, you’re good.  Think about what would happen if there were no road and no rules.  You’re now in a situation where you’re uncertain or even at a loss for knowing how to interact with food because the rules that have been relied on for so long aren’t there.  This is because the connection to your body has been lost.  Diets have the control and they make us feel like we’re in control if we follow the rules.  These are the rules that inevitably make us feel out of control, as previously discussed.  When you eliminate the rules, you allow yourself to rebuild the connection to your body and you can utilize your inner guide skills to learn how to eat again.

Face it Head On!

Fear is a normal part of any life change.  The only way to overcome fear is to acknowledge and work through the fear.  Face it and take the first step in choosing to walk away from the dieting world.  Moving through the fear will move you to an empowering life where diets no longer have control, and you can go from living a life in constant pursuit of control to living life.  And it is so worth it!

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