Syvelocin
August 10th, 2012, 12:30 AM
This is a little more of a rant based on everything I've learned in eating disorder treatment. Most of what I believed already, but I've been in treatment for four months now and it just gets me more pissed off by the week.
The term "diet" has been warped in society from a word to describe your daily food intake into a method of restrictive eating for the purpose of losing weight. Some of them advertise health, for example Weight Watchers while others still focus on the quickest way to shed pounds regardless, diets that focus on one specific food/way of eating. But both of these types of diets alike are completely stupid.
Dieting may seem like the only way to lose weight if you don't have a child-like metabolism, but over time we're actually fucking up our bodies even more. Very few of these diets are even sustainable, and most all of them are not enjoyable to keep up for the rest of your life. So why are you trying? Maybe I'm the weird one who wants to be happy, but really? Come on. We've created this culture surrounded by dieting and aesthetics that's completely counter-intuitive and almost masochistic.
What dieting is doing to our bodies is actually making us less and less in-tune with our natural functions. We become so reliant on other people telling us how to eat that we instantly trip when the food rules are taken away, when our bodies can actually tell us what, when, and how much to eat and STILL find a healthy body weight. Why choose to be drooling over your favourite foods when you can have them, be satisfied with them, and still be healthy and happy? All dieting does is let you lose some temporary weight and then set you up for gaining that and more back.
By telling yourself you can't have the foods you want, you're both increasing your chances of "failing" and eating them in larger than normal portions, and your chances of just wanting them more. By getting rid of the all or nothing mentality and eating the foods you enjoy if you really want them, you both mend your relationship with them, and in-turn crave them less as you don't feel the rebellion or temptation to fill the gaps your dieting leaves in your nutrition. The more you tell yourself no, the more you'll want it.
Starving is no better. By not eating, among other things that have been reiterated a thousand times on this site, you are also activating survival instincts. Yes, it causes you to gain more weight biologically, blah blah blah, but you ALSO trick your body into thinking your food source is threatened, and therefore want to eat MORE than you would normally because your body is unsure of when it will get its next meal. So the more you starve yourself in the name of dieting, the higher the probability of it all come crashing down ending in fire.
And at the end of it, you have no clue when you are hungry, when during your hunger you should eat, and when you've had enough to eat without overdoing it. Without a schedule like dinner at six, would you even know how often you should eat? How often have you said "Well, it's six o'clock, I should go eat something"?
Dieting may seem like a step in the right direction, but at the end of the day, it's an unnecessary cycle of dieting, losing weight, the eventual crash, gaining the weight and feeling guilty about it, and dieting again. Over and over again. I know it's easier said than done, but it's so much more worth it to learn it the first time instead of letting the dieting disease sweep you up.
I've been on a meal plan for a while to calibrate my body. Years of anorexia have left me pretty clueless on when I'm actually hungry and when to trust my body as they are trying to teach me. But as I go on, I'm slowly learning things about my body. When I'm hungry, when I'm not. Eating this much causes this and eating that much causes that. To the point now, while I'm still monitored by my nutritionist, I'm literally not counting calories or having someone else tell me what to do now and it's really quite amazing. I'm steadily gaining weight by trusting that my body knows what I need and when I get to the weight I'm supposed to be at I'll be able to maintain it. And it's quite remarkable. I notice that when I don't have enough protein, my body craves it. And then I can listen to it and have some protein. Just explaining to avoid nasty comments, this is a real thing and it's most definitely possible.
The term "diet" has been warped in society from a word to describe your daily food intake into a method of restrictive eating for the purpose of losing weight. Some of them advertise health, for example Weight Watchers while others still focus on the quickest way to shed pounds regardless, diets that focus on one specific food/way of eating. But both of these types of diets alike are completely stupid.
Dieting may seem like the only way to lose weight if you don't have a child-like metabolism, but over time we're actually fucking up our bodies even more. Very few of these diets are even sustainable, and most all of them are not enjoyable to keep up for the rest of your life. So why are you trying? Maybe I'm the weird one who wants to be happy, but really? Come on. We've created this culture surrounded by dieting and aesthetics that's completely counter-intuitive and almost masochistic.
What dieting is doing to our bodies is actually making us less and less in-tune with our natural functions. We become so reliant on other people telling us how to eat that we instantly trip when the food rules are taken away, when our bodies can actually tell us what, when, and how much to eat and STILL find a healthy body weight. Why choose to be drooling over your favourite foods when you can have them, be satisfied with them, and still be healthy and happy? All dieting does is let you lose some temporary weight and then set you up for gaining that and more back.
By telling yourself you can't have the foods you want, you're both increasing your chances of "failing" and eating them in larger than normal portions, and your chances of just wanting them more. By getting rid of the all or nothing mentality and eating the foods you enjoy if you really want them, you both mend your relationship with them, and in-turn crave them less as you don't feel the rebellion or temptation to fill the gaps your dieting leaves in your nutrition. The more you tell yourself no, the more you'll want it.
Starving is no better. By not eating, among other things that have been reiterated a thousand times on this site, you are also activating survival instincts. Yes, it causes you to gain more weight biologically, blah blah blah, but you ALSO trick your body into thinking your food source is threatened, and therefore want to eat MORE than you would normally because your body is unsure of when it will get its next meal. So the more you starve yourself in the name of dieting, the higher the probability of it all come crashing down ending in fire.
And at the end of it, you have no clue when you are hungry, when during your hunger you should eat, and when you've had enough to eat without overdoing it. Without a schedule like dinner at six, would you even know how often you should eat? How often have you said "Well, it's six o'clock, I should go eat something"?
Dieting may seem like a step in the right direction, but at the end of the day, it's an unnecessary cycle of dieting, losing weight, the eventual crash, gaining the weight and feeling guilty about it, and dieting again. Over and over again. I know it's easier said than done, but it's so much more worth it to learn it the first time instead of letting the dieting disease sweep you up.
I've been on a meal plan for a while to calibrate my body. Years of anorexia have left me pretty clueless on when I'm actually hungry and when to trust my body as they are trying to teach me. But as I go on, I'm slowly learning things about my body. When I'm hungry, when I'm not. Eating this much causes this and eating that much causes that. To the point now, while I'm still monitored by my nutritionist, I'm literally not counting calories or having someone else tell me what to do now and it's really quite amazing. I'm steadily gaining weight by trusting that my body knows what I need and when I get to the weight I'm supposed to be at I'll be able to maintain it. And it's quite remarkable. I notice that when I don't have enough protein, my body craves it. And then I can listen to it and have some protein. Just explaining to avoid nasty comments, this is a real thing and it's most definitely possible.