Dieting Makes Promises it Can’t Keep

Discovering Balance Series Part 8

I attempted to implement the principles of Intuitive Eating right away, but it was not easy. My biggest fear was weight gain. For almost my whole life I was told that I was too big. For the last 7 years, every minute of every day was spent trying to lose weight and suddenly I had to switch gears.

There are 10 principles of Intuitive Eating; the first one is probably the hardest: Reject the diet mentality. Yes, I had done so much research and knew WHY I wanted to turn my back on that life, but my relationship with food and exercise had reached such a toxic level it wasn’t going to be easy. I was essentially trying to undo 40+ years of diet mentality.

When I think about it, I still get angry. Dieting promised me happiness in a smaller body, but it lied. Although I lost half my weight, I never reached contentment in my body. It wasn’t enough. I’m not sure it ever would’ve been. I didn’t like the person I’d become or the negative thoughts that consumed me every minute of every day. I was in an abusive relationship with myself and it would take a long time to recover from the negativity.

Dieting stole so much from me for almost half my life. It told me I wasn’t good enough unless I looked a certain way and made me feel like a failure when I couldn’t keep up the grind. The billion dollar dieting industry counts on us feeling like failures, and we believe it. And we keep going back, for every new diet they promise us is “THE ONE.” I refuse to give them one more penny or one more minute of my life.

But it’s not a switch you can just turn off with a thought. Every single day we are bombarded with messages to shrink our bodies. We live with messages we’ve heard our whole lives, commercials to try this new meal plan or diet, reality shows, movies, health reports in the news, the latest and greatest workouts to try, and don’t even get me started on social media.

Next I share how I got help navigating recovery.