Tag Archives: #dietculture

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.

“Who Will I Be Now?”

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For YEARS, I have been The Girl Who Works Out and Eats Healthy. That’s been my thing. It’s become so commonplace for people to chat with me about meal plans and workouts and weight loss. An encouraging “hey, I saw your workout on Facebook! You’re killing it!” or a reassuring “You’re looking great! Those workouts are really working” or a supportive“You’re so good!” when looking at my meal choices have opened so many conversations over the years. 

Who will I be now? What will people talk to me about? How many people are going to look at this as me just failing at another diet/healthy lifestyle attempt? How many people are going to look at me with disgust or disappointment when my body changes? My fear of judgment is exposing itself so strongly lately, and I’m seriously struggling with it. 

I feel like I need to give people a forewarning about what I’m doing so they’re not shocked and disgusted by my body. Part of me even wonders if I started this blog as a way to explain my changed behavior and body before people could ask or wonder. 

So much of who I am has focused around diets and exercise that I don’t even know who I am without it. When people first started bringing up my workouts when we’d talk, I felt such a sense of pride and accomplishment. It was validation that I was doing well, and I was doing the right thing. I loved when people would message me or come up to me and say “I saw your workout. You’re killing it!” But somewhere along the line, I started to feel this obligation to keep it up. I couldn’t let those people down. And while I believe that extrinsic motivation can be helpful, it eventually took an unhealthy turn. If I was exhausted and felt like I needed extra sleep, I’d ignore what my body was telling me because I needed to get up and workout. I couldn’t be lazy. I owed it to these people who supported me and gave me compliments. 

When I decided to heal my relationship with food and my body, I knew I needed to take some time off from working out. I needed to step away so I could focus my energy on this huge mental task. And I needed to stop posting on social media so I would stop getting comments on my body. I needed to refocus. 

Over the years, I have let supposed “health and fitness” take over who I am as a person. So now that I’m reworking those things, I feel a bit lost. Who am I without my “healthy girl” persona? What will I bring to the table now? If I’m not “the girl who works out and eats healthy” who am I?