Tag Archives: diet culture

Allow Me to Reintroduce Myself

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The past two years have been full of changes and growth. I’ve been working on letting go of who I’m “supposed” to be and learning who I am and who I want to be. Of course, the last year has been full of change as I spent most of 2022 pregnant and then welcomed my happy baby boy into the world in December. But the changing started before that. You could argue that it started years before, but the real work started 2 years ago…back when I started this blog as I began my journey to letting go of food rules.

It’s been a long two years. With lots of up and arguably more downs as I worked through food and body image issues. I said in a previous post that I didn’t know who I was if I wasn’t “the girl who works out and eats healthy.” And now, two years later, I’m realizing that’s partially because working out and eating healthy make me feel like myself. I feel good when I’m eating more vegetables than fast food. I feel good when I finish a tough workout where I’m able to lift heavier or do more reps. It turns out that working out and eating “healthy” (I don’t know that I’m supposed to even use that term) makes me feel like me.

As I was leaving the grocery store the other day, I was talking to myself in the car – as one does – and I thought to myself, “I love potato skins. They’re freaking delicious! But would I want to eat potato skins every day? No. I love salads too. Would I be happy to eat a salad every day? Actually…yes.” That snippet of a conversation with myself made me realize down to my core that “eating healthy” isn’t part of some projected personality I created… it’s me.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last 2 years working on letting go of food rules, ending the restrict-binge cycle, and learning to love myself at a larger size. I’ve followed some amazing women on social media and have watched and read their posts regularly. I saw their messages about gentle nutrition and about learning the difference between eating things because I can and I’m allowed to and eating things because I actually want them. I’ve watched as they showed how you can take the item you want (ex: Doritos) and build a filling and sustaining snack or meal around them (ex: by adding a few slices of turkey and a cut up apple to your plate). I took all of the information in. I tried putting it into practice. But something was never quite right.

I wasn’t ready. Deep down, I was still scared of food, and weight gain, and now I was scared of following food rules. If I wanted Doritos, but I made a plate of turkey, apple slices, and Doritos, wasn’t that just falling victim to the idea that having Doritos wasn’t okay? Wasn’t I just giving into some “healthy plate” food rule? So I stopped buying the apples. And I stopped adding the turkey to the plate. And I just ate the Doritos. And the Cheetohs. And the cookies. And the bowls full of ice cream. And the list goes on and on. I swear there were weeks that I didn’t have a single fruit or vegetable (unless you count the LTO and extra pickles on my Dave’s Double Cheeseburger).

I had fallen off the deep end. I had become a junk food junkie and I felt like crap. There’s a difference between knowing that it’s okay to eat chips with my meal and feeling like choosing to eat carrots instead is somehow bowing down to diet culture.

What’s crazy is that while I may not have been living the diet culture lifestyle anymore, I was still completely controlled by it. My intense fear of spiraling back into food obsession made me avoid anything that might be considered a diet culture-esque choice.

Despite all of the amazing resources that were showing me that true food freedom and intuitive eating consist of a balance between “healthy” and “not-so-healthy” foods, my fear of relapsing kept me stuck.

I don’t know what changed recently. But I feel like I’ve had a heavy fog around me that suddenly lifted. I don’t have all the answers on how I’m going to move forward, but I know that I’ve been feeling lost. I haven’t felt like myself…like I was pretending to be someone I wasn’t. I’m not the girl who eats cheese covered carbs for dinner every night. It doesn’t feel good to me. I’m the girl who loves a giant salad or a big side of roasted vegetables. I prefer a smoothie over a milkshake, and that’s perfectly fine! I don’t regret starting my journey to let go of food rules at all. I just took the long way around to get to where I was trying to go. I opted to stray from the beautifully paved path those women on social media laid out and I got myself lost for a while. But I kept going, I didn’t turn back, and I finally found myself on the path I had always hoped to find. The real food freedom to eat what I want and what makes me feel good.

What Am I Even Talking About?

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When I decided to start this blog a little over a year ago, I had wanted it to be a way to document my journey of letting go of diet culture food rules and learning how to eat intuitively. But as I was going through the beginning stages of the process, I realized it was way harder than I had anticipated. I was struggling just doing it, so it felt impossible to express myself and explain things to anyone else.

A year later, I think I’m ready to start talking about what I’ve been experiencing – the highs and the lows. And I think it’s best if I start by explaining what it is that I’m even talking about. So let’s start with a few general definitions:

Diet Culture: A movement that promotes and values thinness and weight loss – often disguised as “health”

Food Rules: Self-imposed rules about what you can and cannot eat (not related to allergies) often attaching morality to foods (good vs bad food).

Intuitive Eating: Trusting your body to know which foods and how much of them it needs

Over the last year, I have worked on letting go of all of my food rules so I could move closer to eating intuitively. If this isn’t something you’ve ever struggled with, it might be hard to understand what I’m even saying.

So what’s it like being entrenched in diet culture and food rules? You’re constantly thinking about food – what you ate, what you’re going to eat, what you’re not allowed to eat, what you shouldn’t have eaten, how much you’ve eaten, what you ate yesterday, what you’re eating tomorrow, what options will be at that gathering you’re going to, how many carbs you’ve had today, how you’re going to fit in more vegetables at the next meal, how badly you want those cookies your coworker brought in, how “unhealthy” it would be to eat them, how little “control” you have around “junk food”, how many calories are in a full banana, how to stay within your calories/macros/containers for the day/week – the list goes on and on!

It’s honestly amazing I could accomplish anything else when so much of my brain power was used up thinking about food. Before and after every meal, I was doing calculations and planning. Before noon, I would already be asking my boyfriend what he wanted to do for dinner, because that was going to dictate what I “could” have for lunch. Carb filled dinner? Better skip the carbs at lunch. Cheesy (fatty) dinner? Better not put cheese or avocado on my salad at lunch.

My intention of being “healthy” had turned into an unhealthy obsession – physically and mentally. I was consumed by what I was and wasn’t consuming. With so many diets endorsing conflicting information, figuring out what to eat had become some sort of strange math problem.

Learning to let all of that go and trust my body to let me know what it needs is an ongoing journey. Switching from all the food rules and restriction to an over-indulgent free-for-all and now working on finding a happy and fulfilling footing has been anything but easy, but I truly believe it is the best thing I’ve done for myself, and I hope you’ll consider doing it, too.

The Struggle is Real

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The other week, as I posted my last entry, I realized something… I haven’t really talked about how I’ve actually been feeling during this process. And, honestly, the whole point of this blog was for me to put my feelings into words. So, here it goes…

It sucks. It really effing sucks. It’s gotten worse as the weeks have gone by, and a lot of the time, I’m miserable. 

Don’t get me wrong, it’s been amazing and so liberating to eat all sorts of foods that I haven’t had in years or that have always triggered intense food guilt. But I’m so uncomfortable in my body now… more so than ever before in my life. 

I’ve gained so much weight. So much. I weigh 20lbs more than 2 months ago, 30 pounds more than 6 months ago, and the one that really kills me… 45+ pounds more than I weighed 3 years ago. Granted, I haven’t been doing this whole “anti-diet, intuitive eating” thing for very long – almost 3 months – but seeing old pictures of me 45lbs lighter has been killing me. 

I’m so incredibly uncomfortable in my own skin. My clothes don’t fit, I can feel my back fat rolls, and I can see my double chin coming in strong. It’s not a fun experience. I’ve bought bigger clothes to accommodate my larger body, but I just seem to keep growing larger. I know that weight gain is often a natural occurrence when you kick diet culture to the curb, but that doesn’t make it any easier. There’s a possibility that my weight will go back down once my body adjusts to this new way of living without restriction, but I’m not there yet, and it’s hard to handle.

Real talk. I’m embarrassed by my body. I constantly feel like everyone I know can tell I’ve gained weight and they’re all just thinking “Wow. She sure let herself go.” And let me tell you, that’s not a fun feeling. 

Part of this whole project is learning to change how I think about my body and weight. And trust me, I’m trying, but this shit is hard. I can’t tell you how many times my boyfriend has wrapped his arms around my ever-expanding body to comfort me as I cried about how much I hated it. I can’t count how many meltdowns I’ve had when it was time to get dressed for the day and I just couldn’t find something comfortable or flattering to wear. I’m seriously struggling. 

My brain is screaming at me to get back on a nutrition plan, cut down on carbs, and start running every day. The screaming gets louder every time I put on an article of clothing and feel how much tighter it’s gotten. 

I feel like I’m in a lose-lose situation that’s never going to get better. Sure, I can go back to dieting and restricting so I can shrink my body back down (at least until it stops working, like all diets do), but then I’ll be back where I started with food obsession and body issues. But right now it feels like if I heal my relationship with food, I’ll have to be stuck in a body I hate. I can’t win. 

And let me also say this, my problem with this larger body isn’t just that I don’t like the way it looks. It’s also uncomfortable, and not just because my pants are too tight – that part can be fixed by going to the store and buying a bigger size. And I’m not just uncomfortable when I’m around people and they can see how big I’ve gotten. No, I’m uncomfortable when I’m completely alone and naked under my blankets. No one can see me, not even myself, but my mushy body is uncomfortable. Feeling my rolls folding over on my back or my second set of boobs resting on my stomach is flat out uncomfortable. Forget the fact that my underwear is too tight and I can’t wear any of my bras anymore. It’s frustrating and super upsetting when I bend over to try to check out that mole that randomly showed up last year and I can’t see it because my fat rolls are blocking my view no matter how hard I suck in.

Being in this larger body is not fun. I’m trying so hard to reframe my mind, but a lot of days are just filled with disgust and sadness. And while it’s great being able to eat nachos without beating myself up about it, this is far from being a walk in the park. I’m not giving up on it, because I know I don’t want to go back to constant food guilt and obsession over serving sizes and food groups, but this isn’t easy. I’m going to keep trudging forward with the hope and belief that it will get better, but let me tell you that the struggle is real right now.

Hunger and Eating Are Not Signs of Failure

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You know, I wrote that first blog post about eating the whole sandwich over 2 months ago. I wrote it, created this blog, posted the entry, and then let it sit for over two weeks as I contemplated whether or not I should share it with anyone. Even after I posted it, it took me 3 weeks to post another entry. And now, it’s been over a month since my last post. Facing my screwed up relationship with food and my body is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It’s mentally and emotionally draining. I’m trying to retrain my brain after a lifetime of thinking that fat automatically means unhealthy and that I should be embarrassed by weight gain. I’ve spent years feeling like a failure every time I gained a pound or didn’t stick to my meal plan. I’ve beaten myself up with judgment wondering “what’s wrong with you? You had lost the weight. You looked great. Why did you go and ruin it? Why can’t you just get back on track and lose it again? You had it. It was within your reach, and you just threw it away.”

The thing is, every time we “fail” at a diet, we blame ourselves – our willpower. And then we try restricting even more to “fix” what we’ve done. But hunger and eating are not signs of failure. They’re signs that your body is working properly and needs more food.

Fun fact about our bodies… they’re not made to be in a constant state of weight loss. From a biological standpoint, weight loss usually means something is wrong – typically famine or illness. Our bodies are actually made to bounce back from those threats… to bounce back from weight loss.

(because this is just my personal blog to work through all these feelings, I don’t feel like citing the scientific evidence right now, but I urge you to listen to Anti-Diet by Christy Harrison and The F*ck It Diet by Caroline Dooner. They actually cite their sources.)

Even though I have scientific evidence showing that we’re not made to force weight loss, and I have endless evidence showing that diets don’t work in the long term (through my own experience and through watching countless others lose and gain weight repeatedly over the years), it’s hard to undo the years of being told the opposite. And even those diets that claim to not be diets but “lifestyle changes” still typically don’t work long term. Why? Because cutting out brownies and nachos for life just isn’t sustainable. But for real, restriction isn’t sustainable. We all, eventually, rebel against it.

We’re constantly being inundated with messages about how hunger is bad and eating “unhealthy” foods means you’re out of control and disgusting. “Stop your cravings and curb your appetite with this {pill, shake, lollipop, tea, whatever}.” But why?? Having an appetite is a good thing! Have you ever had the heartbreaking experience of being with someone during their last stage of life? A sign they’ll be leaving soon is a loss of appetite. Being hungry is a good sign.

Learning that it’s okay to eat when I’m hungry and that no foods are off limits has been quite the experience. There have been moments of pure joy while eating foods I haven’t had in years, and there have been moments of uncertainty as old thought patterns have crept back in. I still have a lot of work to do, but as long as I keep reminding myself that “food guilt” doesn’t need to be a thing, I think I’ll be okay.

“You’re Allowed to Eat the Whole Sandwich”

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“You’re allowed to eat the whole sandwich.”

What a basic sentence. Nothing earth shattering there. So, why did it immediately bring me to tears when I heard it? How was it that something so simple and, honestly, so obvious could suddenly cause my eyes to well up?

I suppose that’s what happens when someone shines a spotlight onto one of your deep-rooted subconscious fears. I had just started listening to The F*ck it Diet by Caroline Dooner. I was only about 10 minutes into the book when she said that simple sentence. And in that instant, I realized just how scared I had been of food. I’m allowed to eat the whole sandwich. What a novel idea. You mean to tell me that if I eat half of the sandwich, and I’m still hungry, it’s okay to finish the sandwich?? I don’t have to be ashamed or disgusted with myself? I can just eat the food that is healing my hunger? I can just eat? I’m 31 years old and just now learning that eating is okay.

The first time I can remember worrying about my weight was when I was no more than 10 years old. We were still living in my childhood home in arguably the best neighborhood ever in Channahon, Illinois. I had always been a really active child – always out playing tag, or riding bikes, or jumping on the neighbor’s trampoline. I don’t know when I went from being a normal kid to thinking I was the fat friend, but it happened. Somehow, I became aware that there was something “wrong” with me. I don’t remember a specific time that anyone told me I was fat as a kid. I don’t remember being shamed by my friends, and I don’t know why I decided that I wasn’t good enough the way that I was. But it had been decided, and I needed to do something about it.

I remember one night that I sat on the edge of my twin bed with the emerald green comforter, holding the box of plastic wrap I had snuck into my tiny, pink bedroom. I was going to “fix” my stomach. I’m not sure where I had seen this solution or why I thought it would work or was even necessary for that matter, but I had to try it. I began wrapping layer after layer of plastic wrap around my torso. I was convinced that if I slept that way, I would wake up skinny. I WASN’T EVEN A PRETEEN. What in the world was I doing worrying about my weight, or fat, or body? When I woke up to find that I was not, in fact, magically skinny, and that the plastic wrap had actually rolled itself into a thin line across my stomach, I was devastated. Clearly, if this one thing didn’t work, nothing was ever going to work. I think that’s where my issues really began. Issues that I’ve been consumed by for more than 20 years since.

I’ve finally decided to take control of my life by letting go of my control of food and my body. I’m working through DECADES of unhealthy thought patterns so I can hopefully come out the other side as truly happy, healthy, and free. I’m not at the end of my journey with all of the wisdom and answers. I’m not even in the middle of my journey where I feel confident and can show improvements so far. I am right at the beginning of this journey, and I’m scared and excited. I have no idea how this story will end or what turns it will take along the way, but I’m tired of being stuck in the same place. So, here’s to unlearning my food and body issues and learning how to eat normally and accept myself. I’ll eat to that!