After making my 2021 goals I had a serious heart to heart with myself. I spent the first seven days of the year obsessing about food. TRYING to get back to intermittent fasting. TRYING to be good and stay under my calorie count. TRYING to convince myself to workout more.
None of it work. I was constantly thinking about food. Constantly wanting to eat. Constantly angry at myself for not being able to control my food intake.
On the eighth day I was browsing Reddit, being angry and sad at myself, and found just a brief passing conversation about intuitive eating. I said to myself “well, that sounds interesting”, and because I’m the person I am I started digging into it more. Articles, more Reddit posts, even the book. I decided to give it a try. No diet, no restrictions, working out/moving because I want to. That all sounded so amazing. Soooo amazing. Getting away from obsessing about food, weight, exercise all sounded too good to be true.
Is it too good to be true? I don’t know yet. It’s now the thirteenth day of the month, and I’ve had five full days of attempting this change. I shouldn’t be weighing myself, but I did this morning anyways. I only weigh myself on Wednesdays so in seven days, five of those attempting intuitive eating, I lost 0.7 pounds. This is more than I was hoping for. So I’m going to keep going, and hope that, eventually, I’ll be able to put the scale away and just be happy with myself.
It hasn’t been easy, the last five days. Making food, keeping a journal without tracking calories, and actually checking in through the meal to see if I’m full or should eat more. It’s going to take me quite a while to learn my fullness queues after fifteen years of on and off dieting, but I’m looking forward to just being able to enjoy food.
One of the first steps to intuitive eating is to abandon diet culture. I deleted my fifteen year old MyFitnessPal account and removed all diet and weight loss subreddits. Once I can get rid of the scale I feel like I’ll fully be able to abandon diet culture.
For anyone that wants to follow along on this journal I created an Instagram account specifically to do this. There will be lots of pictures of food, selfies, and anything else I can share in picture form to motivate myself, share my journey, and attempt to accept myself at whatever shape/size I am. I’m sure I’ll continue to post long form things here too.
Cassadi Thomas 