1n 2017, I did something I deemed impossible for many of my adult life.
I shed 100lbs and fought off my binge disorder , which had been the devil on my shoulder since my early teens.
As a society, we’re taught from a really early age that our ultimate goal in life should be to reduce . In fact, if we don’t have a preoccupation with thinness, dieting, and calories, we’re accused of not taking proper care of our “health”.
(I say “health” because what’s healthy about obsessing over every little morsel we put into our mouths; forming a negative relationship with our bodies; and never truly allowing ourselves to live?)
In my disordered mind – the exact same mind that had caused me to diet chronically since the age of about 10 and starve myself for days on end after a binge – I had finally found the key to weight loss. I had achieved the proper weight loss mindset!
I had discovered the KEY to weight loss! i used to be never getting to binge again!
Or so i assumed .
I was wrong.
After nine months of utmost dieting, my Binge disorder returned with a vengeance. a bit like it always did after depriving myself.
And so did my self-loathing, shame, and hatred for my very own body.
The only difference this point is that I had gone nine months without binge eating – the longest I’d ever gone since I started dieting. I hadn’t recovered. My disorder had just been laying dormant.
It was then that I realised that i might always be trapped during this toxic diet/binge cycle if I continued to look at weight loss during this way. As this ultimate goal we should always all be striving for.
I understood that I had to interrupt this cycle so as to really get over binge eating and reach body acceptance. Something had to offer and that i didn’t want it to be me.
#So, how did i modify my weight loss mindset and eventually reach body acceptance?
Here’s how my thought process changed when it came to completely transforming my mindset when it came to weight loss.#
1. Reassess your definition of “health”
I stopped viewing the amount on the size because the be all, end all.
In fact, i ended weighing myself; I can’t remember the last time I did.
I honestly haven't any CLUE what proportion I weigh and that i feel bloody fantastic.
I started realising that health and happiness were my two real goals. And trying to reduce wasn’t helping me reach either of those .
I realised that if i used to be constantly striving to be thin, because i used to be conditioned to think that thin = better/healthier, i might always ultimately fail (just like 95% of individuals who continue diets).
Dieting has been proven to directly cause binge eating, also as low self-esteem. So, as long as I continued to slide back to restrictive eating habits (a.k.a. dieting), i might always find yourself bingeing.
I would never be proud of my body or accept it for what it's .
That binge eating would always cause guilt, shame, and poor body image, which might cause me dieting, which might cause me binge eating, which might lead back to shame… then ON.
I was disgusted being trapped during this cycle. I had to prevent the wheel from spinning somehow.
However, i used to be still convinced that if I didn’t reduce , i used to be unhealthy.
I was still deluded enough to believe that dieting and binge eating was somehow healthier on behalf of me than simply stopping both altogether because, again, i used to be still convinced that I should be striving for thinness.
That was until I did a touch research…
I realised that we’re fed tons of misinformation regarding weight and health. Being fat doesn’t automatically mean you’re unhealthy, a bit like being thin doesn’t automatically mean you’re healthy.
It’s our lifestyle that reflects our health, not our outward appearance.
Changing my perspective of what “healthy” actually means was instrumental to beating binge eating and learning to simply accept my body because it helped me quit dieting. I finally realised that health wasn’t calorie counting, over-exercising, and restriction…
It’s NOURISHING our bodies and eating food that not only fuels us but takes care of our psychological state also . Life is pretty miserable without yummy food.
I adjusted my goals to specialise in intuitive eating, body acceptance, and self-love.
I wanted to repair my relationship with food and luxuriate in eating again.
For the primary time in over 20 years of dieting, I didn’t fail.
I learned to like myself and heal my relationship with food and my body.
It also talks about the complicated world of losing weight while still being body positive; the way to accept your body for what it is; the way to fix your relationship with food, and knowledge liberating body acceptance.
I basically re-evaluate the steps and methods I wont to escape 20 years trapped within the diet/binge/self-hatred cycle.
2. Ditch weight loss goals.
For me, weight loss wont to be my biggest goal.
I was obsessed calories, dieting, and my weight.
I would weigh myself several times each day , weigh out my food (even lettuce), and count how calories I burned through exercise RELIGIOUSLY.
No matter what weight I actually was, it had been never sufficiently small which number on the size always terrified me.
Even after losing 100lbs, I wasn’t satisfied.
If that sounds disordered to you, that’s because it had been . And I’m willing to bet that you’ve harboured similar thoughts a minimum of once over the years… otherwise you wouldn’t be here, reading this blog post.
In order to recover and heal your relationship with food, you've got to start out watching weight loss differently.
In fact, you've got to require weight loss goals off the table so as to really recover.
Because all the time you’re fixated on weighing less, you’re still trapped during a negative, weight loss mindset and not repairing your relationship with food and yourself.
Your weight may be a bi-product of your environment, lifestyle, and genetics. Objectively, it’s what proportion space you're taking up. Unfortunately, we sleep in a society where taking over less space is seem as more deserve respect.
If you accept as true with this outlook, like I wont to , we've to vary this.
No one is deserve more of less respect due to what proportion room they take up or what proportion their body weighs. That’s a ridiculous notion, which most folks realise once we reflect thereon objectively.
3. Become knowing diet culture
I went on countless weight plans – Weight Watchers, Slimming World, CICO, the lot. But none worked on behalf of me . In fact, only 5% of diets ‘work’ long-term full-stop.
Every single weight loss plan is simply a diet dressed up during a clever marketing. And diets are proven to cause binge eating and self-esteem problems.
Actively seeking weight loss alone is enough to harm your psychological state . It CAUSES binge eating.
In order to regain my health, I had to prevent dieting. And, to try to to that, I had to teach myself on the risks of diet culture.
One of the large problems is, however, that a lot of diet plans now dress themselves up as “lifestyle changes”. In fact, the tagline for tons of well-known weight loss plans is “a lifestyle, not a diet”.
This feeds into the will to reduce that we’re altogether we should always be constantly striving for, but also soothes our worries over being on a “diet”, since many folks are now growing knowing the very fact that diets don’t work long-term and that they actually even harm our mental and physical health.
When you break it down though, regardless of how you dress up these weight loss plans and market them as lifestyle changes, all of them boil right down to eating during a calorie deficit, which is what you would like to reduce .
You’re still having to eat but your body needs.
Just because they don’t say the c-word (calorie) aloud and instead ask “points” and “syns”, they still mean an equivalent thing.
You’re still getting to binge. Whether that’s during a week’s time or next year. This has been proven time and time again.
4. Change your mindset when it involves food
In order to actually change your mindset when it involves weight loss and improve the way you see your weight and body, you've got to vary your mindset when it involves food.
We’ve been conditioned to ascertain any food that’s not a non-starchy vegetable because the devil. Food causes you to fat and being fat is bad so food must be the enemy… right?
WRONG.
We need food to not only live but to enjoy life.
Food’s not only there to nourish us – although that’s pretty bloody important – it’s there to like .
People bond over food. We use it to celebrate, to attach , to pay our respects. We use it to sooth us in times of stress (which, contrary to popular belief, is really fine once during a while).
It’s a part of life.
When we’re not eating it, or only eating foods we expect we should always because #health, then what’s the point? Life’s pretty boring without it.
With this in mind, it’s easy to know why being on a diet is so depressing!
Learn how to eat intuitively again – it’s honestly life-changing.
Eating intuitively is strictly what it seems like – and we’ve done it since we were children.
When you’re a child , you eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full. But, somewhere along the way, diet culture and societal standards infiltrate our thought processes and that we start ignoring hunger signals and binge eating past the purpose of normal fullness.
Getting back in-tuned with these cues is amazing for our bodies and minds because we start nourishing ourselves again. We THRIVE. You’ll notice your energy sky-rocket; you’ll want to exercise for FUN; and you’ll sleep sort of a baby!
Your psychological state will improve, as will your relationship together with your body and food.
You’ll experience food freedom, be ready to leave for meals without starving yourself all day and studying the menu first; and be more impulsive together with your decisions – within the best way possible.
Food will not be a commodity or leverage . It’ll just be a part of your life.
Instead of fixating on calorie counting and step tracking, you'll spend your energy in better places, like together with your partner or family, or business, or a replacement hobby.
When intuitively eating, if I reduce , that's just a bi-product of not binge eating many thousands of calories every week and truly leaving my house after repairing my psychological state .
NOT restricting and depriving myself.
(I enter more detail regarding changing your mindset when it involves food during this blog post, if you would like to see it out!)
5. Recognise the diet/binge/self-hatred cycle
Weight loss is not any longer the GOAL.
Desperate, I read a book called Brain Over Binge by Kathryn Hansen and it basically changed my life. It completely changed how I viewed my binge eating and made me realise that i used to be on top of things of it. I wasn’t helpless or broken or unfixable. Quite the other .
It also made me realise that the culprit for my binge eating and bad body image was dieting, which I had been engaging in since childhood.
Now I don’t consider about what food I eat; I never binge; I not hate my body; and that i exercise for health and since i really like myself, not because I hate my body.
In my ebook, the way to Stop Binge Eating and begin Loving Yourself, I explain the way to escape this toxic cycle permanently . i used to be a binge eater for 15+ years so quitting binge eating wasn’t easy – but using the steps I mention within the ebook was crucial.
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