“As long as you work out, you can eat what you want!”
“Okay,” I said, not realizing the person who does this themself doesn’t want to, like I do, eat like a binge-eating raccoon.
“Just stop eating when you’re full.”
“Okay,” I said, not realizing the person who does this themself doesn’t have a whacked-out, faulty “full sensor” like I do.
“Life is short. And therefore, I say to eat the brownie.”
“Okay,” I said, not realizing the person who does this doesn’t awaken the food demon by abstaining from abstaining from certain trigger foods.
And the thing that all this advice had in common? It wasn’t that it was bad advice. After all, it worked for the advice giver. Instead, the commonality was that I was eager to believe it. More or less, I, or the part of my brain that has an unhealthy relationship with food, wanted to believe that I could have my literal cake and eat it too. Or, less vaguely, some part of me wanted to believe that I could have an unhealthy relationship with food, yet still be physically healthy.
I wanted to believe that I could work out and burn off all the food I wanted to eat. Which was, indeed, ALL the food. I wanted to believe that stopping eating when full, which to me means stopping eating when gorged, would result in me being a healthy weight. I wanted to believe that I would be satisfied with eating just one brownie, and not the whole tray, awakening my food demons each time I had the one brownie, and then eating the whole tray as a result. And therefore, I took all of this advice with abandon, resulting in me gaining back all the weight I had lost.
But this time around? I don’t plan on gaining back the 200+ lbs I lost. And that’s because I don’t plan on taking advice that I’m eager to take. At least, not without closely examining it first, asking myself, “is this advice that I want to take, or advice my food-addicted brain wants to take?” Because if it’s the latter, it’s likely terrible advice for me. And the advice that will ACTUALLY result in me having a healthy relationship with food, which means a relationship that results in healthy mind and healthy body, is advice that, honestly, isn’t going to sound as fun as the terrible advice. And that’s because it means coming to terms with the fact that I’ll never be able to have my dream relationship with food: eating whatever I want, feeling nice and full, if not stuffed, while having low body fat and six-pack abs.
And of course, all of this raises the question, “how do I know if something will be good advice for me, then?” And the answer to that is a resounding, “I have no idea.” But what I do know is that bad advice is all around, and, in my experience, it is so much more impactful than the good advice…
Thanks.
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