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Despite years of trying, I never managed to lose weight and keep it off until I stopped having any
rules about food. Food lost much of its hold over me once I decided that nothing was off-limits. I
started to eat what I really wanted, when I really wanted it, and to my surprise, I was pretty
moderate about it. Once I finally trusted that I could eat whatever I wanted tomorrow, I stopped
eating like there was no tomorrow.
Falling off the wagon
That is, until this diet came along. You know the one (there are a million of them)—the diet
that’s supposed to make you buff in no time. I’m at a good weight for my height, but
I’d like to lose some fat (who wouldn’t?). And this food plan promised such dramatic
results. (I know, I know—I’m supposed to know better.) I decided it was worth a try.
I lasted four days on this plan, which didn’t restrict how much you ate, but certainly
restricted what you ate. And in those four days, all my old food neuroses, cravings, habits,
and self-disgust came back. I felt unhappy. I felt deprived. I invented excuses to go off the diet,
and when I did go off, I overate because I knew I’d have to go back on the next day.
Then I started to feel like I was gaining weight. And then I felt like a failure. A fat
failure. Anxiety I hadn’t experienced in years haunted me. I thought I’d rid myself of all this stuff, but I was wrong, and now that old downward spiral was starting again. How long would it last this time, how far down would I go? To ease my anxiety, I turned back to comfort eating with a vengeance, which only made matters worse.
All this in less than one week.
A vicious cycle
I tried to get back on the diet. This time I lasted two days instead of four. I felt like an even
bigger failure, and felt that way for the next couple of weeks.
And then, although nothing changed—except that I gave up on losing body fat and went back to
eating whatever I wanted—I started to feel like myself again. And as more time passed, the less like a failure I felt.
In other words, my weight and body-fat percentage had nothing to do with how I felt about myself,
because I didn’t weigh or measure myself during this adventure. How fat I felt was based
purely on feelings I triggered following an eating plan I hated. Once again, I had set myself
up.
Why am I writing about this? Because I learned a lesson. I thought all my old habits, all those
self-destructive ways of thinking about food, were gone. They’re not. I had only learned to
avoid setting them off. So it’s the triggers, not the habits, that I have to watch out
for.
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