Choose Your Own Adventure: Moving Away From Dieting Edition
Have you been at the work of moving away from dieting for a while now? If you are like many of my clients, the high watt energy of new found food freedom experienced at the first stages of rejecting diet rules may be starting to dim.
This is normal.
It may feel like you have stalled out, hit a wall, or lost your way. An uneasy feeling. The story playing in your head is “I’m doing something that I probably shouldn’t be doing. FOMO - everyone is connecting and commiserating over the next diet fad. Gripping fear, deep sadness, or a palpable grief - walking away from a lifelong practice of measuring your success by your body’s shape and weight.
This is typical.
Fear not. What if I told you this is just one chapter of your success story? AND, you don’t have to label this place as failure or bad. You may be entering into the first (of probably many) opportunities for self-evaluation. The best news of all is that this place you are in is abundant in options.
It’s time to choose your own adventure.
Option 1: Make no changes. Stay put. Take a break.
Experiment with the action of stillness, pause and observe, journal, meditate, pray, stretch, and rub some lotion into those dry patches at your elbows.
Option 2: Return to dieting.
Surprised? Good! Having the sense of choice is one of the most integral components to healing and growth. Do I want you to diet? No way. Do I get why returning to dieting might feel like your only option? Absolutely I do. If you decide to go this route, please remember the entire story of you on a diet - the benefits AND the costs.
Option 3: Commit to RAVES
The RAVES acronym stands for Regular, Adequate, Variety, Eating with others, and Spontaneity. This is a more mechanistic approach to eating and is the foundation for moving from a chaotic to a more structured eating style. It’s pre-intuitive eating work. It’s a great place to return to (or visit for the first time).
Option 4: Circle around to your values
Remember why you decided to stop dieting in the first place. Re-cast a vision of what is on the other side of this difficult time. Freedom, flexibility, space in your mind for important things, role-modeling to a younger person, your-answer-here.
Option 5: Get to know your true self
Build understanding, acceptance, and love for yourself. Clarify your self-worth in a way that does not depend on people, accomplishments, or other external factors (your looks).
Option 6: Remember the wins
What about this moving away from dieting journey has been amazing. How is your relationship with food and your body better today than when you first started this work?
Option 7: Find a wise and experienced guide.
You don’t have to be in this stuck place alone. Find a person who has traveled this road before. Connect with a person who has gone out in front of you and ask them to show you a way forward. Reach out for support.
Learning to eat in a connected, attuned manner takes work. It may ask you to come to the edge of your comfort zone. It’s not always smooth sailing.
Just like moving from childhood to adulthood, there will be growing pains. With kindness, compassion, and curiosity, these low moments, the confusing times can be viewed objectively. As an invitation to sit back and view all the routes forward.
The pass/fail mentality belongs to diet culture. The work of moving away from dieting means even dead ends are simply opportunities to learn and grow.