Nothing reminds me that we live within a dysfunctional food culture so much as a dinner with people from another country.

My good friend from Iran, who is also a dietitian, invited us to a party at her apartment recently. Her brother (also from Iran) was there, as well as her husband and cousin who are also Persian-Americans. She is a great cook and put on a lush spread which included many hors d’oeuvres, two lasagnas (meat and vegetarian), quinoa salad (she is such a good cook I even liked the quinoa), and later, cupcakes and a Belgian chocolate cake. Lordy, I love a lady who can appreciate a quality chocolate cake!

We all ate heartily of both lasagnas and salad over good conversation (which was the true centerpiece of the meal, really). Afterward she showed us photos of their recent trip home to Iran. Being an amateur food anthropologist, what interested me most were the pictures of food. Food at all the family get-togethers. Exotic foods that involved pomegranate syrup and other ingredients I’ve never tasted. Big spreads that did not look low carb/high protein or low fat/high carb or low protein/low fat or anything remotely resembling a diet. Obviously family members coming home from long distances is a big deal and deserves some serious food celebration, but I also got the sense that eating well on a regular basis is not uncommon for my friend and her countrypeeps.

We started talking about food and eating. My friend’s brother told us with a sly smirk, “The thing that accompanies a Persian meal most often is guilt.”

“Guilt??” I said. Of course — the dieting guilt!

“Yes, like when you’ve eaten so much already and are full and then your aunt says, ‘You didn’t try my tahchin! I know it isn’t as good as your mother’s…’ and then you have to eat it so her feelings aren’t hurt.”

I had to laugh as I imagined someone getting a guilt trip in here in the U.S. for not eating enough. I think it used to happen. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t happen much now.

My friend has always been a hearty enjoyer of good food. While she naturally likes many “healthy” foods, I have never heard her talk about eating for weight or feeling guilty for eating anything (and one time, after a “small plates” dinner concluded at a restaurant, she leaned over and said, “I’m starving. When can we get some real food??”). I have never known her to skip dessert. She once looked at me forlornly and said, “Glenys, if I ever gain weight, I will just have to be fat because I like food so much I could never go on a diet.” A woman in her 30s that had never even contemplated some sort of food restriction during her lifetime struck me with surprise – I know almost no one like that! (In all honesty, I know exactly two other people who are like that. Also not originally from here.)

She is the kind of eater I had always wanted to be: an appreciator of good food who eats and then doesn’t worry about it. She once told me she must have an afternoon coffee with a pastry – it just wouldn’t be right to have one without the other. In a world without dieting, this seems like a normal desire. Having spent years in the dieting trenches, it is still hard for me to not think of this as pure decadence that will lead to weight ruin (don’t worry, I’m more or less over that). A pastry with coffee or tea is the most normal thing in the world for many people, as it should be.

Back to the party. I asked, “Is there a word in Farsi that means ‘diet’?” “No…” both ladies said. A few seconds went by and one of them said, “Wait, yes…rejim…it’s a French word.” Indeed, the word for “diet” in French is régime. I love that Farsi doesn’t even have its own word for self-induced-starvation. That it literally is a foreign concept.

After that, we all had a slice of cake and a cupcake. None of us except my (self-named) Remorseless Eating Machine significant other could finish the dense, rich cake, but no one felt deprived. No thoughts of rejim even crossed our minds.

Now, contrast this with a scene in my partner’s workplace the following week. He had brought in some donuts and was offering them around to his co-workers. The first person took one and pleaded, “Please, next time, don’t even stop to offer me one because I can never say no.” Another person took one and said, “I can have this because I worked out last night!” A third said, “You’re going to get diabetes from eating that.”

Dudes, it’s a donut. It does not have the power of The Dark Side of The Force to strike you dead on the spot, or even just kinda ruin your life a little. It’s. One. Donut. I’ve addressed this before: within a balanced, satisfying diet, one donut will do nothing more than simply serve as a delicious treat.

But that’s how screwed up our national food culture is. In fact, we don’t have a food culture – we have a diet culture. It has become harder and harder to find people whose lives have not been touched by dieting in some way. And not only is it boring as hell, it’s damaging to our mental and physical well-being too.

Our media gives plenty of lip service to the U.S.’s high rate of metabolic-type diseases (diabetes, heart disease, hypertension), especially when compared to other countries, yet we are obsessed with eating less and “being healthy” (read: being thin). Can we put two and two together here and get that our obsession with weight loss and restriction is not helping?! (it’s not even making us thin never mind healthy)

Eating at my friend’s party let me imagine what it would be like to grow up in a culture with almost no familiarity with dieting. A culture that experienced food with gratitude and pleasure, not fear. A culture that provided an abundance of food, when it has it, for its children to learn to honor their appetites and trust their bodies to guide them in their eating so that as adults they can approach food in a completely relaxed way.

We shouldn’t have to imagine that. We shouldn’t have to leave where we are to experience this kind of food freedom. We can start to create it here and now.

Check it out: Dietitians Unplugged Podcast!

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Episode 2 coming soon!

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As summer gives way to fall (well, not in LA, it is still blazing hot as I write this in the middle of October), I’m thinking back to my August staycation-vacation.

One of the reasons I love staycationing in LA is that it’s got everything I love in a vacation: heat, beach and no need to fly anywhere. We took advantage of some of LA’s best: biking along the Pacific Ocean bike path (“The Strand”), and of couple of glorious beach days.

We own boogie boards but had never quite mastered the art of catching a nice wave all the way into shore. On this day, though, the waves were perfect for it. We waded through a kelp forest to get to the sweet spot and then sped inward to shore wave after wave after wave – pure, unadulterated fun. On one turn, I passed by a couple of young teenage girls gingerly wading in the shallows, their dad recording their every pose on his phone. Wearing a look of manic joy on my face, I screeched, “THIS IS AWESOME!!!!” as I passed by them; the look on their faces was best described as mild, pleasant embarrassment for this middle-aged lady. However, not long after, I saw those girls back in the water with their own rented boogie boards and wearing the same thrill in their faces and no longer paying attention to their dad with the camera (or the middle-aged lady, probably).

Things I didn’t think about while boogie boarding at the beach: how my body looked in my swimsuit. I am WAY into body positivity and feeling good about oneself and accepting what we have now, but this is a process. After at least 34 years of being so focused on the size, shape and look of my body (I became aware of my body in that way around age 10), it’s not easy to just stop (It’s easy to decide to stop. But after that…process). The beach, however, is one of the places I am happiest and most in-the-moment and therefore least aware of how my body looks to others, despite being in the least amount of clothing. Maybe it’s all the other sensory input: sand on my feet, cold salty water on my skin and stinging my eyes, the sun warming and sometimes even burning my exposed skin, the waves crashing into me – I love all of this. I become aware of my body in another way that has nothing to do with how I look, and everything to do with how I am experiencing the world at that moment.

On another day, we rented bikes and rode along the bike path that follows the ocean. I haven’t ridden a bike with any frequency since I was in grade school. It was so fun!! I felt so lucky at that moment to live in Southern California and to be able to ride a bike. We rode to a restaurant in Playa Vista and had the most delicious sandwiches. Bonus: former child actor Anthony Michael Hall was having lunch in the same place!! (The Breakfast Club is seriously one of my favorite movies). It was a hot day and my honey and I were both sweaty. I probably looked pretty messy as I always do when I’m doing any sort of exercise or activity. As always, I was in my fat body. And once again, I just didn’t care. My body was a vehicle to enjoy these wonderful moments – how it looked was irrelevant.

I’m not saying that in order to appreciate our bodies we need to completely forget about what they look like. But once in a while, I think it can help. Boogie boarding and biking reminded me that our bodies are here to allow us to live life. In our appearance-focused culture, it can be all too easy to let worries about our fat bellies, thighs or hips, or our sweaty armpits or our disheveled hair distract us from the real living – the fun or the learning or the meaning of what we are doing. When we can let go and focus on those things, we truly become body positive.

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One of the great things about Twitter is that you can get into interesting debates with all sorts of people who don’t agree with you. I actually think that is totally fun! One of the conversations I found myself in recently was with someone who was adamant that everyone should give up sugar (the glucose-fructose table sugar kind, and in general any fructose-containing food) in order to achieve good health. Obviously, I disagree.

Being an all-foods-fit kind of gal, I responded (and I’m paraphrasing a bunch of my tweets here), “That’s great if it works for you, but it’s not necessary for most and not sustainable either.”

Not satisfied with my response, this person then offered up as the ultimate evidence of its nefarious nature: the rationing of sugar during World War II and the decline of heart disease and diabetes during this time. But guess what else happened? Meat, butter and gasoline were also rationed. So it could have been the decrease in butter consumption or meat consumption – or the decrease in consumption of all of those foods combined – or the fact that people probably walked more because gas was rationed. We just don’t know enough to be able to say that the decrease in disease was due to decreased intake of one kind of food. (Nylon was also rationed, so pantyhose were also hard to come by. I think it’s obvious that the decrease in disease was due to all that unfettered ladies’ skin!)

The conversation went back and forth for a while, with this person insisting that sugar and fructose are the ultimate dietary evils, the cause of many metabolic diseases (providing one study on fructose and gout which was interesting but certainly not conclusive. I found other evidence that refuted this connection, so seems like the jury is still out on this one) and me in my stance that while I don’t believe sugar is a health food, there can be room for it in an overall healthy eating pattern, and that total restriction probably wouldn’t work for most people in the long term anyway. In the end, I said we’d have to agree to disagree and part ways on the conversation. And then he blocked me. So much for the sharing of ideas!

Certainly there is compelling evidence that sugar is not a “health food.” Other than pure energy in the form of glucose, there is not much nutrition it has to offer otherwise. I’ve read the various cases made against sugar and also carbohydrates, just as I’ve read the evidence against fat and high protein diets. It’s all very interesting and I’m always watching for any new compelling and useful nutrition science, but for now it seems like the only thing everyone can really agree on is that vegetables are good for us. And it’s always useful to remember that too much of anything is probably not great for us (broccoholics beware!).

But you know what? I get it. Dietary changes can be hard to make — even more so when they are related to weight loss, which often seems to be the goal (perhaps with the hope that weight loss will cure other problems). Because of the inherent nature of intentional weight loss (i.e., it doesn’t work in the long term) we sometimes look for more motivation to make those changes stick. That’s when we start demonizing foods, to convince ourselves that some foods or food groups are so toxic to our very beings that we must never eat them again. How else would you get through someone’s birthday party where some wonderful German chocolate cake was being served? How would you make it through the holiday party season, where every combination of carb/fat/protein is being passed in front of your face, and you there, with your deprived, hungry belly?

I dabbled in this demonization for a while myself. Sugar. Fat. Then meat. Then conventionally farmed produce. I convinced myself with increasing fervor over the years that each ousted food or food group was anathema to my good health. I convinced myself that I felt better with each of these restrictions, but the truth is, I didn’t. I don’t have severe food allergies that require restriction, and cutting those foods out only made me crave them more, and overeat on them furtively when no one was looking (not to mention the cost and inconvenience alone of trying to eat only organic and local).

Don’t get me wrong – there are foods I avoid because they really don’t make me feel good. Milk is one of them. I used to love very spicy foods – not so much now. It’s easy for me to avoid these foods because I don’t want to deal with the repercussions after eating them. Does that mean I should insist that everyone else avoid these foods because it will eradicate all their bodily ills? Of course not. I don’t even insist that everyone should become an intuitive eater (but it is here for you if you like!).

If you have found the diet that works for you – and I mean really works, as in, you can do this and it hasn’t take over your life and made you miserable – great! If you have to cultivate an aura of intense food fear for yourself and everyone else around you in order to maintain this diet? You may have just joined the diet cult of The True Food Believers.

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Hey guys! Trying out a new thing this week and I hope you all enjoy it. My good friend and amazing registered dietitian Aaron Flores and I have collaborated on a project we’re super-excited to share with you: The Dietitians Unplugged Podcast!

Aaron is a private practice dietitian in Calabasas, CA, specializing in Intuitive Eating and Health at Every Size®.  I met Aaron during my internship when I had the great luck to have him as a preceptor (instructor). Aaron is brilliant at helping clients break the cycle of dieting and guiding them on their journey towards honoring their internal cues of hunger, fullness and satisfaction.

When I heard Aaron talk with Lana on the awesome #sizeHUMAN podcast, I said to him, how fun would it be to sit around and talk about this stuff with each other on a regular basis…and invite others to listen in? Answer: TOTALLY FUN! And with that, Dietitians Unplugged was born. We hope you find this fun and helpful too. So without further ado…

Episode 1 – We talk about our experiences with dieting and finding HAES® and Intuitive Eating.

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Can I tell you about the time I went to Italy and it was the beginning of the end of my terrible diet?

About a year after I had vowed to get my “best” body ever, I was ready to take a three week vacation to Italy. I had dreamed of going to Italy ever since I was in high school and now it was finally happening.

The itinerary included Venice and as many towns in Tuscany we could fit in, with Sienna and Florence as the main events.

There was only one problem: how the hell was I going to stay on my diet once I was surrounded by so much wonderful, non-diet-approved Italian food?? The “Points” value of all that cheese alone was incalculable. In my regular life, I was walking around in a mild to moderate state of hungry most of the time. I was also a strict pescetarian at the time, for reasons which are still unfathomable to me because they had nothing to do with my health or my love of animals.

If you are thinking right now, “What’s the big deal? Everyone eats what they want on vacation!” then you, my friend, have not been to a Weight Watchers meeting. When someone declared gravely, “I am going on vacation,” we would all nod in sympathy and rally around the person with suggestions of how they would be able to stay “on plan” and not gain weight. Then the leader would say, “But of course, enjoy yourself. It shouldn’t be all about the food anyway,” and what she really meant was, keep dieting.

And when someone came back from vacation, having gained a few pounds because it is so miserable to diet on holiday, the confessional would take on the proportions of a mental health crisis. Between the pre-vacation panic and the post-vacation guilt, you’d wonder why anyone on a diet would bother to go. Ironically, sometimes the vacation is the reason we wanted to lose weight in the first place!

But I digress. Off to Italy I went.

In Venice, I woke up to a breakfast of brioche and chocolate spread. Did you know chocolate spread was a thing in Italy?! I didn’t! I spread the chocolate over all of the little breads and pastries salaciously. Was I allowed to eat this? Do they even have Weight Watchers in Italy*?? I was convinced that none of the Italians I had seen on the street the day before would hesitate. So I ate it and then wished for more. For three days in Venice, it came.

Quickly I learned that in Italy, pizza is not considered a junk food. It’s just food! Vegetables were abundant on menus everywhere – but not just sad, fat free affairs. No! Roasted eggplant, peppers, mushrooms and zucchini swam in rich green olive oil. Ohhh, my diet! I ate them anyway. I would starve back in America, but in Italy, it seemed wrong to even consider it.

In Tuscany, I dined in a castle where I ate delectable, tender tuna marinated in – you guessed it – olive oil. I ate pasta of every kind, in marinara, oil, pine nuts, cheese – too many “Points” to count, so I gave up. I even tasted my companion’s wild boar sauce – and to this day I regret that I wouldn’t let myself order a helping of my own.

I had an entire meal of chocolate – a Nutella crepe, hot cocoa of gooey chocolate lava. I remembered thinking, this is it, I’ve given up on diet food, I’m just going to eat chocolate for every meal now (as a now well-fed person, this does not actually sound appetizing). The death knell of my diet began to toll. Real food is beckoning…

Oh yes, and I ate gelato. Everyday.

I couldn’t believe Italians were eating food like this every day…but they were! All the time! And they weren’t worried about it!

I still worried and obsessed over every bite. I still worried about what the scale would say when I got back. This did not add to the enjoyment of my vacation.

I came back from my Italian holiday having gained only 2 pounds (and the sad fact doesn’t escape me that I can tell you exactly what my weight was before and after vacation 12 years ago). But in the following months, having tasted heaven, it became more and more of a private hell to maintain such a low body weight. At the same time, I wanted to eat more of the healthy (yes, healthy, this is the Mediterranean Diet you know!), scrumptious foods I had eaten in Italy without turning it into a diet-friendly abomination. These two endeavors could not be reconciled with each other, and over the next three years I inched up 10 pounds (and of course, I would gain more after I really gave up dieting for good. WORTH IT.). Italy had won. As it rightfully should have.

I will go back to Italy someday, not on a diet. I don’t imagine gorging on everything I see because, being adequately fed, I no longer have that need. Nor will I worry about every bite I put in my mouth. I simply know I’ll enjoy whatever foods I want and eat as much as I need to feel satisfied. I know I will sometimes eat gelato just for the hell of it (but probably not every day as that no longer sounds appetizing). My focus will be on a lot of other things, too, that I probably missed the first time when I was there on a diet, hungrily worrying and obsessing about food every second.

*they don’t

Coming soon: Podcast!

I’m super excited to announce an upcoming collaboration between the awesome Aaron Flores, RDN and myself: The Dietitians Unplugged Podcast! Topics will focus on Intuitive Eating and body positivity. The podcast will be available on both our sites as well as iTunes. Watch for the announcement soon!

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Why you overeat …and what to do about it

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When you are trying to lose weight and are on a diet (or just, you know, a “lifestyle change”), there are usually many rules. Rules about how much to eat, what foods to eat, when to eat them, what you cannot eat. This is usually fine in the beginning, because starting a new diet is often accompanied with a sense of euphoria; the excitement of a new “project” that will result in a bright new shiny body at the end. Getting all the rules right requires total immersion and so at first, what is going on in the world outside the diet grows quiet.

Eventually, however, we face social interactions involving eating with friends, family, co-workers. And we all know some naturally thin people, people who have never dieted, the person dieters might sometimes refer to as “someone who can eat anything.” The people to whom we’ve said longingly, “Oh, you’re so lucky, you can eat anything you want and not get fat.” How did saying that make you feel? How did it make the thin person feel?

For me (the not-naturally-thin person), I felt envy. It was so much less about getting to eat what I wanted, or what they were eating, and more about how they didn’t seem to worry about eating at all. How food they really liked was just something they ate when they were hungry, instead of something they had to try to avoid as long as possible, or to turn into some tasteless diet-friendly version of their favorite food.

So, envy, and then…something else. There were rules for me and no rules for them. They were “allowed” and I was not, and this was all based – arbitrarily, it seemed – on the shape and size of my body. Because my natural size and shape was less than. Which made me feel like a second class citizen.

Even though I had achieved the goal of “smallness,” what I had to do to stay there constantly reminded me of my second class status. And, constantly reminded, I did not feel deserving of the things “normal-sized-by-nature” people seemed to have: good food and peace of mind, permission to like and accept my body, the companionship of someone who truly suited me and would have accepted me no matter what. Even a satisfying career seemed out of reach because what I really had to work on was my body all the time, at all costs. It is virtually impossible to have good self-esteem and achieve the things you want under these conditions.

And what do these declarations of “You can eat anything” do to the people you’ve levied them on? They send a message: I, and others like me, are not worthy. And from good people you will elicit pity, and not-so-good people, scorn. Do you want either of these?

I have several naturally thin friends. I’ve hung out with them enough over many good meals to know that we don’t eat all that differently at all (in fact, these ladies have wonderful, robust appetites; no bird-like eaters are they), and yet we have very different bodies. Should this be so shocking? And should it mean that I have to go to food prison while they eat manna from Heaven? I say no. I get to enjoy my food just like they do.

The impact of weight-loss dieting goes far beyond feeling hungry and underfed. It kills our self-esteem and sense of self-worth.

Consider the other options: Health at Every Size® to liberate you from the obligation of bodily perfection, Intuitive Eating to free you from food envy and obsession. These have helped me and so many others to gain a sense of body respect, not just for our own bodies, but for the bodies of others, thin and fat, muscular and flabby, able-bodied and differently-abled.

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Why you overeat …and what to do about it

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I finally got around to reading my July/August copy of Food & Nutrition Magazine, the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics publication that I enjoy immensely for the bite-sized tidbits of information (more corny dietitian humor. Corny! Ha!).

When you’re a dietitian, everyone wants to tell you their theories on what they think is the best diet (one of my nutrition instructors told the class this is why she won’t tell people what she does for a living at parties. Don’t I know it!). Often someone will say to me, “I’ve heard that eating (5, 7, 9, the number varies) small meals a day is better than eating three.” So it was with great interest that I read the article “What Science Says About Snacking.” Well, what do you think? Three squares or nine mini-meals a day?

Turns out the evidence supports…both. Huh!? So says the article:

“Snacking may help control appetite, or it may contribute to recreational eating and excess calories. Research supports both opposing views. Beginning in the 1960s, studies noted that people who ate the fewest number of times during the day had the greatest amount of excess body weight, leading many health professionals to recommend frequent eating as a weight-loss tool. More recently, researchers have challenged the idea that eating frequently aids weight control…[Studies] suggested that the more often someone ate, the higher his or her body mass index would be.”

The article sited several different studies which supported both sides of the argument. One study compared men who ate identical diets as either three square meals a day or as 17 daily “nibbles.” The nibblers had better cholesterol at the end of the study – but would you want to eat 17 times during the day?! You’d better have a very flexible job if you decide to go this route!

Ultimately, the article admitted, “Both the Evidence Analysis Library of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and experts at a 2009 symposium on eating frequency and energy balance concluded that scientific evidence pointing to an ideal eating frequency for weight control doesn’t exist at this time” (emphasis mine).

Not surprisingly, most of the studies looked at the effects of snacking or not snacking on weight, likely because many researchers remain hooked on the idea that weight=health. We know this is not true and there is ample evidence supporting this. But what about the effects of snacking on other metabolic parameters? The evidence is just as inconclusive. In the end, the article said, “While there is considerable interest in eating frequency, there is no consensus regarding an ideal pattern.”

Many diet plans have touted the effects on metabolism of many vs fewer meals a day, but once again,

“Although some dieters snack to boost their metabolic rates, research suggests these efforts are in vain. Studies that examine data for up to 48 hours after eating find that the jump in metabolic rate or the thermic effect of food is not dependent on meal frequency. Rather, overall metabolic rate is similar when a specific amount of food is eaten during few or many occasions.”

So even your metabolism doesn’t care if you snack or not.

How many diets have advised ideal meal patterns over the years as part of their foolproof weight loss schemes? More than I can count. And in the end, since science can’t agree, the best meal pattern is probably the one that you like the most – not for health reasons, but because it suits your life and appetite. Letting others dictate how often you should eat isn’t a guaranteed path to health or weight loss and might even be destructive to your body’s own intuitive internal regulation.

When I’m at work (and not on my own natural schedule), I tend to need snacks to quell hunger between meals because I eat breakfast earlier than I normally would. But at home, when I’m truly eating according to my own natural rhythms (waking up later, eating breakfast later, lunch a bit earlier, and dinner at my usual 7 pm), I find I don’t need snacks at all. So both methods work for me depending on my situation.

If you aren’t already in tune with your hunger and satiety signals, it’s worth it to invest some time in getting to know them well. Truly recognizing these cues from a weight-neutral perspective will help you best determine the eating pattern that is right for you. And don’t let the latest weight loss gurus tell you otherwise.

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Someone left a message on my Facebook page along the lines of (and I’m paraphrasing because I deleted it toute suite) “This comment probably won’t be appreciated here [correct!] but this page seems like a big excuse for people to be overindulgent and lazy. You don’t have to do crazy fad diets or anything but people should try to eat better and be the best they can be.” It was left by a gentleman who was very muscled and shirtless (and notably, headless) in his FB photo, so based on that and the general negative tone of his comment, I’m guessing he disapproved of my message to love our bodies as they are.

I deleted the comment because of the negative, accusatory tone – I intend for my Facebook page and blog to be safe, positive spaces for people practicing body positivity and Intuitive Eating. People of size, people who have suffered from eating disorders, even people with “normal size” bodies who want to step away from dieting – we all hear enough pro-diet, negative body talk in the world every day. I don’t owe anyone a platform for their thoughts, and there are plenty of places on the internet where those kinds of comments will be appreciated. But one thing I do want to address here is the particular sentiment of “People should try to be the best they can be.”

First of all, while I would love to encourage people to be the best they can be, the word “should” is troublesome because who are any of us to tell anyone what they should do? People can do what they want and they don’t need anyone’s permission.  But say some folks decide they want to be “the best they can be” (if they feel they aren’t currently at their best)? Great! Does that necessarily have to mean our bodies??

Maybe my commenter’s version, based on what he said and how he’s choosing the represent himself in his online persona, involves doing what it takes to have a body shaped similar to his: lean, large, muscled. Perhaps his body is the masterpiece of his life and that is his idea of being his “best.” That is absolutely a-okay because that’s what he wants. That works for him.

But does that mean improving one’s body is the universal meaning of “be the best you can be?” Not for me, it isn’t. I tried for many years to make my body the masterpiece of my life, and all it ever did was leave me unhappy. Even with all the societal approval that I “won” with my acceptably-small-sized body, I was simultaneously profoundly unhappy with my body and fearful that I would lose what I had created. My masterpiece left me wanting so much more out of life, not the least of which was peace of mind.

I realized my body did not have to be the culmination of my life’s work, that there were other things I could be “my best” at – like loving myself without judgement and then learning how to stop judging others for the thing I had agonized over in myself.

I learned I could learn things – like chemistry! – that I never thought I could when I was so busy creating my “best” body. I learned that when I did learn new things – microbiology, ho! – I felt much better about myself than when I had dutifully eaten like a dieting all-star all week. Sadly, I could have earned two PhDs for all the unhappy time I had spent thinking about ways to maintain my societally correct body.

The “best” me can have vigorous conversations about politics, science, pop culture, sociology, religion, fashion – things that don’t even involve my profession, nutrition (but I like talking about that, too) or my body (a topic which, frankly, bores me). The “best” me want to read books that bring me a new understanding of the world. And – unlike my body-shaping efforts of years past – doing these things actually makes me happy!

I learned that “the best I can be” is different for everyone, and that there was a better “best” inside of me than out. You get to choose what your best is, and it will involve your body, whether you want to conquer a sport or have a better understanding of constitutional law or become an ace quilter.

So I’m sorry I couldn’t let your post roam free on my Facebook page, dear commenter, but my followers don’t deserve to be shamed for choosing different paths to the best they can be.

*edited from original to add a link I had forgotten to add!

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Why you overeat …and what to do about it

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I have to thank a commenter in an Intuitive Eating discussion group I belong to for the catchy title of this post. It was in response to another poster who had said he felt he was eating too much and generally eating “everything.” It got me thinking about the ways that this could easily happen when we are in the early stages of learning to give up dieting and eat intuitively.

For those of us who have dieted, Intuitive Eating can feel like a lifesaver once we get over the fear of trusting our own bodies. When we start to tune into our internal cues of hunger and satiety and eat accordingly, we can feel an immense sense of relief and freedom from restrictive eating.

But what happens when we start to become just as restrictive with IE as we were when we dieted? When “eat when you’re hungry” (a guideline) becomes “eat ONLY when you are hungry” (a rule)? When “stop when you’re no longer hungry” becomes so rigid that you are left craving more? That’s when Intuitive Eating has become a rule, not a tool, and you’re in danger of embarking on yet another diet.

We eat for many reasons: primarily stomach hunger, but also sometimes for mouth hunger, for celebratory reasons, because you won’t be able to eat later, for comfort, and sometimes just because it is there. Having a strict control rule such as “I can only eat when my stomach feels a certain level of hunger” can feel restrictive, and restriction is frequently associated with binge-eating behaviors (See the evidence here). Having permission to eat for all the other reasons, while mostly aiming for stomach hunger, creates a safe space for eating where you are in charge (as opposed to in control).

Same for fullness/satiety. Most of the time, we are listening for the “not hungry” cue to tell us when to stop eating. But occasional overeating is normal – say, on special occasions, like a holiday meal, or when a particular meals tastes especially wonderful (hello pizza!). Feeling like we have permission to overeat if we want to gives us – not “the rule” – the decision making power over what and how much we eat.

Once we’re back in Rule Land, it’s easy to feel confined to healthy, moderate eating – and it becomes easy to want to rebel against it too. That’s when we might start feeling like we’ve gone off the rails, eating without listening to internal cues, and trying to satisfy the psychological deficits restriction creates.

When I learned to eat intuitively, I found that I still had a hard time regulating myself with pizza (did I mention this is my favorite food!?). As I honed in on my internal eating cues, I found I was able to recognize satiety after one slice most of the time. However, there were times when I wanted more just because it tasted especially wonderful (because not all pizzas are created equal, and sometimes it just is better), but I felt guilty that I was eating past my satiety. That resulted in feeling like I was restricted – and then I ate even more. Eventually I realized that I could eat just as much as I wanted, which sometimes meant a little, and other times meant more – and the freedom allowed me to stop overeating to discomfort on this food. My significant other (a natural intuitive eater) makes it his business to occasionally overeat on pizza just because he likes it so much. Remember that if we listen to our body’s cues most of the time, an occasional indulgent eating episode won’t disrupt our weight regulation.

Following our hunger and satiety cues are best thought of as guidelines that will help us make good eating decisions in the moment. Becoming obsessive with these guidelines can make us feel cheated. Sometimes you’re not all that hungry for that birthday cupcake (especially right after the delicious birthday meal) but you want it anyway because it’s a celebration – and, hey, how often do you have cupcakes anyway? (for me: not nearly often enough!)

So remember, let Intuitive Eating be your tool to the best eating for you – not a rule that puts you on another diet.

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Why you overeat …and what to do about it

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