Thursday, September 2, 2021

I joined the IE and “Anti-Diet” Movement for one year and I’m more confused than ever

i’m so confused right now about my weight journey. I got a “one year ago today” memory from my phone this morning of a picture of me, 40lbs down and looking great at the height of my weight loss journey. I’m looking at this picture as I sit here at a 50lb difference from that photo. Heavier than Ive ever been in my life.

Ive been on and off diets my whole adult life, and at the start of the pandemic I joined a weight loss program and lost about 40lbs in 6 months. I was in a groove, but it wasn’t easy and I started to get really sick of tracking. Around this time, all of my social media accounts started to become flooded with the whole “anti-diet” movement. Everyone seemed to be hooked on this revelation that dieting is toxic, not sustainable, and basically extremely harmful. People were pushing intuitive eating, fuelling your body with whatever it wants, “life is too short to skip the donut”, all that kind of stuff. I was seeing registered dieticians online saying how bad calorie counting is for your body. how toxic it is for your mind. So, being in a place where I felt I had a good grasp on portion sizes and healthy choices, and given that I was super sick of tracking, I decided to join the anti-diet movement. I didn’t just go in blind, I did my research. I read a bunch of books about intuitive eating, etc. I followed it for a year, and honestly it was liberating at first. I mean I’m sure we can all agree that not having to track a single thing would feel kind of freeing, right?

But here I am one year later, having gained back all the weight I lost plus more, the heaviest I’ve ever been. Any time I checked in with intuitive eating support groups or anti-diet pages, concerned about my weight going up and up and up, they would say “throw away your scale” or “trust the process” or “this is natural - your body is finding its set-point”.

That’s a lie. This isn’t natural. 250+ lbs doesn’t feel natural to me. I don’t fit into normal sized clothes, I don’t fit into all normal sized chairs, I get tired after a 20 min walk. None of that seems natural. I can’t imagine that my body’s “set-point” is over 250lbs. Somethings not right with that.

And it just keeps getting more confusing to me - I went out for dinner with a friend last night, and we sat on the patio of this little local Bistro that had super tiny plastic chairs. I shifted uncomfortably in my too-small chair terrified it was going to break underneath my weight, while simultaneously ordering the fries and the soda and dessert because my (thin) friend ordered all those treats and the anti-diet movement told me I deserve it just as much as she does. Again, something doesn’t feel right with this logic????

Can someone please tell me i’m not crazy? I started tracking again today and felt SO much relief. But then I opened TikTok and the first video I saw was someone making fun of a dieter for counting out their goldfish crackers, talking about how toxic and harmful that is. I feel like my brain is broken!!!!

And just to be clear - I didn’t just fly off the handle and binge eat for a year. I genuinely followed IE. Gained 50lbs. I can’t live at this weight, and I don’t know what to do

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