Finding peace with food
January 22, 2023 2:24 PM Subscribe
[Trigger warning] I’m a healthy weight but my relationship with food is kind of disordered. I go between eating “normally” for months and slowly gaining weight, and then losing it quickly with an unhealthy level of restriction. I’m in the middle of a diet phase right now and realizing that I’ve sort of lost the plot. I just want to find peace and stability with food.
Early 30s F. I struggled with excessive dieting as a teenager, but managed to find a healthy balance for most of my 20s at a healthy BMI. However, I put on some weight in my later 20s, and then a little more once the pandemic hit. By summer 2020 I was mildly overweight and embarked on a diet. I lose 20 lb and got back to the “ideal” weight of my 20s but I feel my mental state has never really recovered and I basically maintain my weight by going on an extremely restrictive diet for one month of the year.
When I am eating “normally” I feel OK and not obsessive for the most part. I am very active and eat healthy, just probably slightly too much as I will be gaining a pound every month or two. I basically do this until I gain 5 lb and then I go on a diet again.
Every time I plan to diet slowly, go at a mild deficit and lose half a pound a week, etc. But I feel like the act of dieting causes me to completely lose control. I get extreme anxiety when I feel like I’m not losing fast enough so I will just restrict more and more until I am irritable, emotional and difficult to be around.
Right now I’m actually a few lbs below my “ideal” 20s weight, but I’ve become obsessed with dieting and am trying to lose a few more. And I really feel like I’m losing the plot. I actually had a crying meltdown because I didn’t have a good weigh-in this morning, and a stupid fight with my boyfriend yesterday because he made dinner and served me too much. I spend way too much time reading weight loss/fasting/fitness boards on Reddit. I feel really scared of food and desperate to lose a few more pounds..
I don’t look like I have an eating disorder. I’m basically trying to get from BMI 22 to 21 right now. I don’t think anyone would think I am too fat or too thin, before or after. i don’t know if I’m overreacting but I really do feel out of control. Like I feel I am sort of like the alcoholic of dieting, once I start things get way out of hand.
Anyway…I’m just looking for advice and self-help books. I can’t really afford therapy right now. I just want to make peace with food and my body and stop doing this.
Early 30s F. I struggled with excessive dieting as a teenager, but managed to find a healthy balance for most of my 20s at a healthy BMI. However, I put on some weight in my later 20s, and then a little more once the pandemic hit. By summer 2020 I was mildly overweight and embarked on a diet. I lose 20 lb and got back to the “ideal” weight of my 20s but I feel my mental state has never really recovered and I basically maintain my weight by going on an extremely restrictive diet for one month of the year.
When I am eating “normally” I feel OK and not obsessive for the most part. I am very active and eat healthy, just probably slightly too much as I will be gaining a pound every month or two. I basically do this until I gain 5 lb and then I go on a diet again.
Every time I plan to diet slowly, go at a mild deficit and lose half a pound a week, etc. But I feel like the act of dieting causes me to completely lose control. I get extreme anxiety when I feel like I’m not losing fast enough so I will just restrict more and more until I am irritable, emotional and difficult to be around.
Right now I’m actually a few lbs below my “ideal” 20s weight, but I’ve become obsessed with dieting and am trying to lose a few more. And I really feel like I’m losing the plot. I actually had a crying meltdown because I didn’t have a good weigh-in this morning, and a stupid fight with my boyfriend yesterday because he made dinner and served me too much. I spend way too much time reading weight loss/fasting/fitness boards on Reddit. I feel really scared of food and desperate to lose a few more pounds..
I don’t look like I have an eating disorder. I’m basically trying to get from BMI 22 to 21 right now. I don’t think anyone would think I am too fat or too thin, before or after. i don’t know if I’m overreacting but I really do feel out of control. Like I feel I am sort of like the alcoholic of dieting, once I start things get way out of hand.
Anyway…I’m just looking for advice and self-help books. I can’t really afford therapy right now. I just want to make peace with food and my body and stop doing this.
Start with the Intuitive Eating book, and they have a workbook too if you want to use it.
Understand that it is about healing your relationship with food and monitoring your actual body's cues and responses to food. It is not a means of weight-loss. Most people do not lose weight, because orthorexia is not compatible with a healthy relationship with food. This is a permanent shift of attitude for rejecting diet culture, moving into eating disorder/non-restrictive eating recovery, and approaching food as a morally-neutral substance and bodies as morally-neutral in shape.
This is recovery from a lifelong addiction most of us are forced into. It takes time. It is very likely you are going to gain weight/your body shape is going to change at least for a while but probably permanently, and so to some extent you have to be ready. But there's something to say for just getting the book and first just absorbing the contents, maybe without trying even the beginning steps, and let it percolate a bit.
But if you're yelling at someone else for the amount of food you eat, you may need to simultaneously address some anxiety-management issues, which will absolutely rear their heads intrusively as you try to overcome the anxiety we are programmed to have about food.
posted by Lyn Never at 3:33 PM on January 22, 2023 [2 favorites]
Understand that it is about healing your relationship with food and monitoring your actual body's cues and responses to food. It is not a means of weight-loss. Most people do not lose weight, because orthorexia is not compatible with a healthy relationship with food. This is a permanent shift of attitude for rejecting diet culture, moving into eating disorder/non-restrictive eating recovery, and approaching food as a morally-neutral substance and bodies as morally-neutral in shape.
This is recovery from a lifelong addiction most of us are forced into. It takes time. It is very likely you are going to gain weight/your body shape is going to change at least for a while but probably permanently, and so to some extent you have to be ready. But there's something to say for just getting the book and first just absorbing the contents, maybe without trying even the beginning steps, and let it percolate a bit.
But if you're yelling at someone else for the amount of food you eat, you may need to simultaneously address some anxiety-management issues, which will absolutely rear their heads intrusively as you try to overcome the anxiety we are programmed to have about food.
posted by Lyn Never at 3:33 PM on January 22, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm so sorry you're going through this. I'm the daughter of a mother with a life-long eating disorder, I had orthorexia in my 20s, and my sister currently has a pretty bad ED. This stuff is super hard.
I'm assuming that if you can't afford therapy, you can't afford to work with a nutritionist, either. If that IS an option, message me -- I found it REALLY helpful. A cheaper option: I follow a nutritionist on Instagram who I LOVE -- her posts and videos are always such a good reminder about what a healthy relationship with food looks like.
Between aging, stress, and the pandemic, I've put on about 30 pounds in the last few years. I find it REALLY helpful to be reminded that there is nothing inherently wrong with having a larger body, and that society would love nothing more for me to devote all my time to spending money on diet products, so I can spite them by embracing my body as-is. This might be a different angle than you're looking for, but it really helps me.
One of my favorite ways to tap into that mindset is the podcast Maintenance Phase, which is two extremely smart, snarky people taking down diet culture and the wellness industry as a whole. One of them is Aubrey Gordon, a fat woman and brilliant writer who has produced two books on the subject of fatness. You might listen to an episode or two and see if it resonates with you.
posted by leftover_scrabble_rack at 4:43 PM on January 22, 2023 [5 favorites]
I'm assuming that if you can't afford therapy, you can't afford to work with a nutritionist, either. If that IS an option, message me -- I found it REALLY helpful. A cheaper option: I follow a nutritionist on Instagram who I LOVE -- her posts and videos are always such a good reminder about what a healthy relationship with food looks like.
Between aging, stress, and the pandemic, I've put on about 30 pounds in the last few years. I find it REALLY helpful to be reminded that there is nothing inherently wrong with having a larger body, and that society would love nothing more for me to devote all my time to spending money on diet products, so I can spite them by embracing my body as-is. This might be a different angle than you're looking for, but it really helps me.
One of my favorite ways to tap into that mindset is the podcast Maintenance Phase, which is two extremely smart, snarky people taking down diet culture and the wellness industry as a whole. One of them is Aubrey Gordon, a fat woman and brilliant writer who has produced two books on the subject of fatness. You might listen to an episode or two and see if it resonates with you.
posted by leftover_scrabble_rack at 4:43 PM on January 22, 2023 [5 favorites]
I spend way too much time reading weight loss/fasting/fitness boards on Reddit.
This is a difficult problem that is not readily solvable, due to the cultural bullshit alluded to by Lyn Never, but you need to stop visiting all these boards, right now and completely.
posted by praemunire at 5:02 PM on January 22, 2023 [5 favorites]
This is a difficult problem that is not readily solvable, due to the cultural bullshit alluded to by Lyn Never, but you need to stop visiting all these boards, right now and completely.
posted by praemunire at 5:02 PM on January 22, 2023 [5 favorites]
+1 intuitive eating
Also if you find your mood is really dominated by blood sugar, try zone meals (each meal is balanced 40% calories from carbs 30% calories from fats and 30% from protein — note that is calories not grams). It avoids the emotional crash even if you go a little longer between meals because your blood sugar is much more stable over many hours.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 5:33 PM on January 22, 2023
Also if you find your mood is really dominated by blood sugar, try zone meals (each meal is balanced 40% calories from carbs 30% calories from fats and 30% from protein — note that is calories not grams). It avoids the emotional crash even if you go a little longer between meals because your blood sugar is much more stable over many hours.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 5:33 PM on January 22, 2023
The Intuitive Eating book is great! I would also recommend Eat Up, which was a gentle, joyful read on relationships to food. I haven’t read it in a few years, so might be a little out of date, but I found it approachable and helped with my own demons at the time.
It’s so hard though, and a forever-journey, so I hope that you have friends or other people that also understand the tenets of intuitive eating to support you in this time. Great work on identifying your own pattern though, and staring to ask for help.
posted by sincerely yours at 12:52 AM on January 23, 2023
It’s so hard though, and a forever-journey, so I hope that you have friends or other people that also understand the tenets of intuitive eating to support you in this time. Great work on identifying your own pattern though, and staring to ask for help.
posted by sincerely yours at 12:52 AM on January 23, 2023
Oh! Also since once you start dieting it quickly derails, maybe consider channeling that competitive spirit elsewhere (league sports?) and also spend some time loving yourself as you are - healthy weight or a few pounds up or down. Sometimes eating disorders is a manifestation of looking for a pat on the head and as women boy do we get pats on the head for being skinny. So keep reassuring yourself of how loveable you are!
posted by St. Peepsburg at 9:48 AM on January 23, 2023
posted by St. Peepsburg at 9:48 AM on January 23, 2023
I am so sorry you’re going through this, I can really relate. Please know that you are not broken. Everything you have described is a reasonably normal consequence of the modern dieting cycle, and also a function of the ways our brains work - both because we have conditioned them to do so over many years, and because they are actually made to seek and preference hyper-palatable food, to avoid restriction and starvation, and to follow patterns of behaviour (even addictions) that are perceived to bring safety, comfort and soothing.
This may be an unpopular opinion but Intuitive Eating did not work for me, at all.
I highly recommend the books of Gillian Riley, starting with Ditching Diets. She has simple, practical, evidence-based tools and techniques for self-directed neuroplasticity, i.e. changing the way you think, that are highly compatible with healthy eating and reaching a sustainable, healthy weight. She also has an online course that runs 3 times a year, with a community forum, and does individual video consultations for less than the average price of a psychologist.
I haven’t achieved total recovery or perfection with these methods, but it’s certainly brought me a lot closer than anything else out there.
Good luck, and please know it is entirely possible to leave this way of life behind and to have freedom from the burden of dieting and restriction. You may, at some point, be faced with a reality about where your weight naturally sits without an arduous, ongoing management of your food and eating. Being 22 on the BMI scale, rather than 21, may at some point be the price you are willing to pay for a greater sense of relaxation around food. Having said that, it is completely reasonable to want to eat healthfully and be a healthy weight, as well as enjoying all the non-weight benefits of eating well… and I find Gillian Riley’s work a sane, compassionate and logical pathway to doing so.
posted by Weng at 2:52 PM on January 23, 2023
This may be an unpopular opinion but Intuitive Eating did not work for me, at all.
I highly recommend the books of Gillian Riley, starting with Ditching Diets. She has simple, practical, evidence-based tools and techniques for self-directed neuroplasticity, i.e. changing the way you think, that are highly compatible with healthy eating and reaching a sustainable, healthy weight. She also has an online course that runs 3 times a year, with a community forum, and does individual video consultations for less than the average price of a psychologist.
I haven’t achieved total recovery or perfection with these methods, but it’s certainly brought me a lot closer than anything else out there.
Good luck, and please know it is entirely possible to leave this way of life behind and to have freedom from the burden of dieting and restriction. You may, at some point, be faced with a reality about where your weight naturally sits without an arduous, ongoing management of your food and eating. Being 22 on the BMI scale, rather than 21, may at some point be the price you are willing to pay for a greater sense of relaxation around food. Having said that, it is completely reasonable to want to eat healthfully and be a healthy weight, as well as enjoying all the non-weight benefits of eating well… and I find Gillian Riley’s work a sane, compassionate and logical pathway to doing so.
posted by Weng at 2:52 PM on January 23, 2023
PS. Coincidentally, Gillian’s online course is currently open for a free trial here. It’s a pretty low-tech, no-frills website, but if you overlook that, the content is IMHO solid gold.
posted by Weng at 11:02 PM on January 23, 2023
posted by Weng at 11:02 PM on January 23, 2023
I used to have a similarly bad relationship with food and now I have a great relationship with food and my body. So it is possible! Other people have great suggestions but since nobody mentioned it - I would dump your scale. Throw it away! And get rid of any clothes that are not comfortable and flattering.
posted by beyond_pink at 7:59 AM on January 24, 2023
posted by beyond_pink at 7:59 AM on January 24, 2023
Hi! Dietitian here, and seconding leftover_scrabble_rack on following @thenutritiontea ... Her memes are top notch, and her content is sound, and she'll lead you to many other related dietitians in the "anti-diet"/ "food freedom" space (terms regularly changing and evolving).
I'll admit, even with all of my familiarity with the theory and what the current science is around BMI and weight only being one tool of MANY to describe health, it's HARD to break that mindset of being at a certain weight as ideal throughout our lives. I say that as a person in a similar position as you, also early 30sF with bonus curve ball of "recently had a baby".
YMMV and bodies are complicated, but the BMI you're aiming for might not be what your body needs in this particular moment. What your describing definitely sounds like your body telling you it's hungry! Anecdata from my lived experience, but my preferred healthy weight in my 20s had typically been around a BMI of 25-26 because of the muscle I had on board, which is "technically" overweight!
There's some great points upthread, and I'll also add that EDs don't have a look. There are many folks at a "normal" or elevated BMI who go undiagnosed or undertreated because they don't present with a low BMI, but meet many of the other criteria. The definition of EDs has expanded in the past few years so that we can try to get more people the care they need through better screening and diagnostic tools. Unfortunately, those folks are often encouraged to use the same behaviors for weight management that we'd be concerned about if someone was classically underweight.
As far as what to do today and right now, here's what I'm doing for myself: donate my clothes that don't fit (saving a few favorites for the attic) and getting ones that do or are more forgiving and flexible; focus on ADDING nutrition vs removing calories (for me, that's ensuring I get my 5-a-day, being mindful of not doing as much takeout, and using lots of herbs and spices); being firm but flexible with OhHaieSpouse and myself on portion sizes and checking in on my hunger and fullness cues mid-year -- am I truly hungry, or am I thirsty, and/or do I really want that next portion or can I enjoy it later/tomorrow and still be satisfied? Might still go for that extra bite, but I'll have given it some thought.
Sending you strength, and I'm in your corner!
posted by OhHaieThere at 9:09 PM on January 24, 2023
I'll admit, even with all of my familiarity with the theory and what the current science is around BMI and weight only being one tool of MANY to describe health, it's HARD to break that mindset of being at a certain weight as ideal throughout our lives. I say that as a person in a similar position as you, also early 30sF with bonus curve ball of "recently had a baby".
YMMV and bodies are complicated, but the BMI you're aiming for might not be what your body needs in this particular moment. What your describing definitely sounds like your body telling you it's hungry! Anecdata from my lived experience, but my preferred healthy weight in my 20s had typically been around a BMI of 25-26 because of the muscle I had on board, which is "technically" overweight!
There's some great points upthread, and I'll also add that EDs don't have a look. There are many folks at a "normal" or elevated BMI who go undiagnosed or undertreated because they don't present with a low BMI, but meet many of the other criteria. The definition of EDs has expanded in the past few years so that we can try to get more people the care they need through better screening and diagnostic tools. Unfortunately, those folks are often encouraged to use the same behaviors for weight management that we'd be concerned about if someone was classically underweight.
As far as what to do today and right now, here's what I'm doing for myself: donate my clothes that don't fit (saving a few favorites for the attic) and getting ones that do or are more forgiving and flexible; focus on ADDING nutrition vs removing calories (for me, that's ensuring I get my 5-a-day, being mindful of not doing as much takeout, and using lots of herbs and spices); being firm but flexible with OhHaieSpouse and myself on portion sizes and checking in on my hunger and fullness cues mid-year -- am I truly hungry, or am I thirsty, and/or do I really want that next portion or can I enjoy it later/tomorrow and still be satisfied? Might still go for that extra bite, but I'll have given it some thought.
Sending you strength, and I'm in your corner!
posted by OhHaieThere at 9:09 PM on January 24, 2023
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