When You Finally Decide to Stop Dieting (And Intermittent Fasting)

I'm done with these salads, done I tell ya! Photo by Carrie Borden on Unsplash

You know it's funny - I started this blog site - I Quit Binge Eating - over two years ago but have yet to truly write about food, dieting, and you know, NOT binge eating.

There are a few reasons for that.

Food got "quiet" around the time I was working on this site because I started dating my now husband.

Have you ever experienced this?

Times in your life where whatever you're struggling with - food in this case - gets easier or goes "quiet" for a while?

I'm sure you have.

These time are wonderful; sort of.

They make you think you don't have a problem, that everything is fine and you don't need to worry about this thing anymore.

But those times are always temporary; whatever the struggle was, it will return because nothing was actually solved.

And that's what's happened to me countless times and is what happened again when I met my now husband.

Anyone who's ever fallen in love knows that you lose your appetite during this time. You're distracted; you're HIGH on LOVE...!

The promise of this person and a future together, finding any moment you can to be together, it's truly all-consuming and everything else fades into the background.

Me and my husband. Photo by Robert Keane on Unsplash

I don't know if this is the case for everyone or just me, but I have a hard time focusing on a topic when it's not front and centre of my mind anymore.

I had fully intended to write about food, dieting, and NOT binge eating when I started the project (before I met my now husband.)

But then I launched the site shortly after he and I met and life in general just got so busy and overwhelming that I was no longer struggling with food. (Luring me into that false sense of complacency.)

So the topic fell by the wayside as I wrote about other things that were more relevant in the moment instead.

But now here I am, nearly a year after the wedding.

Food has come to the forefront of my mind once again, because obviously, it never went away. (It was dormant, but now has re-awakened.)

Aside from the fact that the love between my husband and I is stable and steady - and no longer all consuming - there were a few things in my life that caused me to start eating more than I had been.

After six years of intermittent fasting for 18-20 hours a day (Autophagy! it will save your life, or didn't you know?!) and never eating until noon, I needed to start eating breakfast again because of my early morning workouts.

Whereas I had been doing at home workouts shortly before noon since COVID, last spring I rejoined the gym and started doing 6 AM workouts.

That meant that waiting until noon to eat was nearly impossible.

So...I started eating breakfast.

And it was as though a dam broke.

After SIX years of restraint - of not eating breakfast, barely eating at lunch and then - let's be honest - overeating at night - I felt released.

It feels so good NOT to be constantly mentally pushing against food.

That constant mental push/pull between you and whatever you're trying to resist is exhausting and my GAWD does it ever sap your energy!

It's virtually impossible to focus on anything else when your mind is so consumed with the push and pull of food and dieting.

You see, I started this site with the intention of discussing how I quit binge eating - while I was still struggling with food...

Now I'm not binge eating and it's wonderful; like I said, a lot more mental space. When you get to eat whatever you want whenever you want then you don't spend all of your time thinking about food.

But now I'm faced with a different problem: How do you eat like a (pardon my use of the word) NORMAL person? Does anyone eat NORMALLY? (What does that even mean?)

I don't know about everyone else, but here's what I mean: I spent six years simply avoiding food; I avoided making decisions about food.

Most notably I avoided listening to my body.

I ignored my hunger while I was fasting, and I ignored my fullness when I was overeating or bingeing.

(Those of us who have been abused are really, really good at ignoring what's happening to our bodies.)

And now, I don't know how to interpret my body's signals.

Am I hungry? Am I full? What do I actually WANT to eat? Can I not eat even though the clock says I'm supposed to?

Intermittent fasting - aka not eating - was easier in many ways because there were less decisions to make, less things to pay attention to.

But I know that not eating is what leads to bingeing.

Food rules, dieting, and deprivation are what cause an obsessive focus on food.

Freedom is the only answer.

And allowing that freedom is challenging.

Freedom means eating.

Eating more than I used to means gaining weight because there's some pendulum eating.

Intuitive eating guru Geneen Roth says for every diet there's an equal and opposite binge, and she's right.

There were a few weeks... months... of "OH MY GAWD I AM NOT ON A DIET AND I CAN EAT ALL THE THINGS" and I may have eaten all the things.

And my pants may have gotten tighter.

I'm not happy about that at all.

But I also know that getting back on the diet roller coaster isn't a good idea.

So that's where I'm at.

I'm 45-years old and for a plethora of reasons, I find myself needing to learn how to eat.

Or more specifically, how to really listen to myself.

I don't gotta diet 'cuz my fur grows with me. Photo by Luca Cavallin on Unsplash

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