Thanks to Amy Giannotti for this guest post.
Letting yourself go may be exactly what you need to do.
For a long time dieter or prisoner of dieting, suggesting stopping counting calories, restricting food and instead eating according to their appetite would sound insane. With “no control” many would fear it would result in weight gain.
Majority of people are born with the intuitive wisdom in how to eat. These skills include knowing when you are hungry and full and having certain taste preferences.
Unfortunately for many, our internal signals are ignored for various reasons and our instructions on how to eat comes from the outside.
The “thin ideal” is a phenomenon in our current western society that drives us to all feel we should look and fit the same shape. It illustrates a slender body with a small waist and little body fat that is naturally unachievable for most women.
Diet culture fits in here that many get swept up in. It promotes sizeism, promoting thin bodies are more worthy than fat bodies. Fat is associated with failure, lazy and unhealthy. Thin with being self-disciplined, controlled and healthy. Diet culture does not accept or is inclusive of size and body diversity.
Diet culture tells us how and when we should eat. Once you start ignoring your internal appetite cues you have started an endless battle.
Dieting is most often started with a honeymoon period. Some initial weight loss from food restriction and an energy deficit is found. We gain a sense of control that is often accompanied by a change in body shape or behaviour that is noticed by others too. This is dieting’s seductive trap, opening the prison doors.
Your body has just experienced starvation, an initial shock. But don’t forget, our bodies are very smart and wired for survival. Your cells do not recognise this as a voluntary restriction of food and energy. The hypothalamus, the control centre of your brain receives these messages and changes gears into survival mode. Your food cravings escalate and through a very intelligent process, slows down or switches off ‘non-essential’ bodily processes and your metabolism slows down. This lowers your energy needs. An energy deficit is an absolute requirement for weight loss and lowering your metabolic rate is like lowering this line, making the deficit harder to achieve. This is accompanied with signals to eat more and move less. Here is when you start to feel stuck or imprisoned.
If this is how you’re feeling, here are my top 10 tips on how to escape:
- Write down the pros and cons of dieting
- Write down the pros and cons of making a change to stop dieting (trust me, it is different)
- Reflect on how dieting has effected opportunities, relationships, events and your physical, mental and social health
- Investigate how often your food intake and eating behaviours are dictated by external rules such as diet rules or social pressures
- Evaluate which has a greater impact on your food intake; external or internal messages and what has been the result of this
- Using an appetite scale of 1-10, 1 being empty, 5 satisfied/neutral and 10 stuffed full/sick, evaluate physical and emotional symptoms e.g. empty, physical: weak and emotional: easily irritated, difficulty concentrating
- Evaluate where you mostly sit on this scale
- Reflect on what occurs after letting yourself drop to the lower end of the scale
- Reflect on how you feel and behave when you reach the top of the scale.
- Without judgement, honour your body like an intelligent machine, listen and observe carefully and try to provide your body with what you feel it needs.
Arriving at your bodies most healthful weight is not about will power or self-control. Instead it’s having trust in your body that it will give you the accurate information about what, how and when to eat. Be patient, it can take some practice to rewire habits and accept new understandings. Enjoy your new found journey of freedom, free from the diet prison gates.
More about Amy Giannotti:
Amy Giannotti is a qualified Dietician, Personal Trainer, Strength and Conditioning Coach, Running Coach, Yoga Teacher and Founder of Eating Fit, an online platform offering personalised nutrition and training programs. As a former triathlon competitor, Amy has particular interest in working with and mentoring individuals training for ultra-endurance events as well as working with women with complex health issues, due to her own lived experience. Amy combines her skills and passion for all things health and fitness to help empower people to achieve their personal, performance, health or wellbeing goals.
For more information on Amy, Visit: www.eatingfit.com.au/ or follow her on Instagram: www.instagram.com/amyleegiannotti/
