By Roni Davis | Tiny Buddha
“Your body is precious. It is your vehicle for awakening. Treat it with care.” ~Buddha
When I went on my first diet in my teens (low-carb, it was back in the Atkins days), I wasn’t even overweight. I weighed less than 120 pounds, but my jeans had started to get a little tight, so I thought I needed to lose five pounds or so. At the time, I didn’t have a bad relationship with food; I just ate like a typical teenager—not the best choices.
About two hours in, I remember starting to obsess over the things I couldn’t eat and being desperate to be skinny ASAP so I could eat them again.
By mid day, I “failed.”
I caved and ate…. *gasp, shock, horror*… carbs.
And something weird happened. Instantly, I felt like I was bad.
It’s not just that I thought I had made a bad choice.
I thought, “You idiot, you can’t do anything right. Look at you, one meal in and you screwed up already. You may as well just eat whatever you want the rest of the day and start again tomorrow.”
I think I gained about five pounds from that attempt.
And I continued slowly gaining more and more weight every year after that—and feeling guiltier and guiltier every time I ate something “bad.”
Atkins low-carb miracle cure had failed me horribly and began a decades-long battle with food and my weight.
See, it wasn’t that I thought my choice was bad and then I just made a better choice next time; it was that I felt like I, as a person, was bad.
And what happens when we’re bad?
We get punished.
I didn’t realize until many years later, but those degrading thoughts and overeating the rest of the day were, in part, my way of punishing myself for being bad and eating the bad things.
The harder I tried to control what was going in, the worse it got and the more out of control I felt.
In my thirties I hit bottom, as they say, as a result of trying to follow a “clean eating meal plan.”
Four days into my first attempt to “eat clean” and strictly adhere to what someone else told me I should eat, I had my first-ever binge.
Prior to that, I had some minor food issues. I ate kind of crummy, had slowly been gaining weight, and felt guilty when I ate carbs (thanks, Atkins).
But a few days into “clean eating,” I was in the middle of a full-blown eating disorder.
The clean eating miracle craze may have made me look and feel amazing, but emotionally, it failed me horribly and began my years-long battle to recover from bulimia and binge eating.
But I thought it was just me. I was such a screw up, why couldn’t I just eat like a normal person?
I saw how much better I looked and felt when I was managing to “be good” and “eat clean,” but within a few days or weeks of “being good,” no matter how great I felt from eating that way, I always caved and ended up bingeing again.
And every time, I thought it was me. I told myself I was broken and weak and pathetic.
Even later, when I started training other people, my message was “If it’s not on your plan, it doesn’t go in your mouth” and “You can’t expect to get the body you want by eating the things that gave you the body you have.”
I wanted clients to feel amazing and get the best results possible, so I gave them what I knew would accomplish those two things.
But, at the time, I didn’t know that it was actually those messages and rules that had created all my own issues with food, and I most definitely didn’t know they would have that affect on anyone else.
I thought everyone else was “normal.” I was just broken and weak and stupid—that’s why I struggled so hard to just “be good” and “stop screwing up.” Normal people would see how much better they felt when they ate that way, and they’d automatically change and live happily ever after.
Ha. No.
The more people I trained, the more I became acutely aware that food is the thing most people struggle with the most, and I started recognizing the exact same thoughts and behaviors I’d experienced, in the majority of my clients.
And almost every single one of them also had a looong history of failed diets.
Hmmm. Maybe it wasn’t just me.
Not everyone goes to the extreme of bulimia, but the more I spoke with other people about their struggles with food and shared my own with them, the more I realized how shockingly pervasive disordered eating and eating disorders have become.
Binge eating is an eating disorder—one that more people struggle with than I ever imagined. Though, most people are horrified to admit it, and many may not even be willing to admit to themselves that they do.
I get that because it’s associated with lack of self-control and gluttony, and there’s a great deal of shame related to both of those things. But it actually has little to do with either, and you can’t change anything until you admit you’re struggling.
And disordered eating in general is even more pervasive.
Feeling guilt after eating is not normal. That’s disordered eating.
Restricting entire food groups is not normal. That’s disordered eating.
Severely restricting food in general in not normal. That’s disordered eating.
Beating yourself up for eating something “bad” is not normal. That’s disordered eating.
Starting and stopping a new diet every few weeks or months is not normal. That’s disordered eating.
Diet culture has us so screwed up that we spend most of our lives doing these things without ever realizing they’re not normal. And they’re negatively affecting our whole lives.
As I was working on my own recovery, I dove into hundreds of hours of research into dieting, habits, motivation, and disordered eating—anything I could get my hands on to help not only myself but my clients better stick to their plans.
It’s so easy, I used to think; there must be some trick to make us just eat what we’re supposed to eat!
But I learned the exact opposite.
I learned that trying to “stick to the plan” was actually the problem.
The solution wasn’t in finding some magic trick to help people follow their meal plans; the solution lied in not telling people what to eat in the first place.
There are many reasons behind why we eat what we eat, when we eat, and even the quantities we choose to eat; it just doesn’t work to tell someone to stop everything they know and just eat this much of this at this time of day, because at some later date it’ll make them skinny and happy.
Our brains don’t work that way.
Our brains actually work exactly the opposite.
As soon as we place restrictions on what we’re allowed or not allowed to eat, our brains start creating compulsions and obsessive thoughts that drive us to “cave.”
Have you ever noticed that as soon as you “can’t” have something, you automatically want it even more?
That’s a survival instinct that’s literally been hard-wired into our brains since the beginning of time.
In November 1944, post-WW II, physiologist Ancel Keys, PhD and psychologist Josef Brozek PhD began a nearly yearlong experiment on the psychological and physiological effects of starvation on thirty-six mentally and physically healthy young men.
