Since hitting the month of September, I'm officially one year on from ditching the diet - and wow don't I notice the difference it has made to my life! So I just thought I would share a few tips that I've learned from my own journey so far, that I thought would be helpful to those who are beginning an intuitive eating path.
1. Recognise that giving up the control you think a diet brings to your life can be truly scary - with the main fear being around weight gain and not being able to trust yourself with food.
Acknowledge this fear, but remember that diets do not actually really help you to control your weight in the LONG term (overall, they help you put it on). The only person who can do this is you, not a diet, and the more you let dieting go, the more you are able to learn how you can trust yourself.
2. Consider what you're embarking on as an experiment, something that will be fun, and something that will help bring the joy back into eating! The more you treat your journey as a pleasurable ride, with some ups and downs like a rollercoaster, but above all, a thrill, the more you will be able to ride out the bumps without feeling like giving up!
3. Don't focus on losing weight - focus on improving your relationship with food and eating. It's hard to let go of dieting habits if you keep thinking of ways to drop pounds, and you may not be truly eating what you want.
4. Remember weight gain can and does happen, but it is not the end of the world! This is often a time when you feel like reverting back to dieting (and oh how tempted I was! At one point I broke down in tears, just feeling like I no longer knew where to go with it all).
But think - after the diet, then what? You're still back at square one trapped in the struggle of binge and starve. Get the meaning of weight gain into perspective and really try to get past short-term gains, instead considering how fabulous life would be if you weren't hung up on every morsel you put in your mouth.
5. Fill your fridge and cupboards with CHOICE! The more food you have around, the more you can decide what you really want to eat - and it makes it so much more fun when you truly have options, rather than a choice between a diet ready meal or a tub of low-fat cottage cheese!
6. Get support - find blogs of women doing the same and communicate with them, join forums such as Diet Survivors, share with friends who understand (though I have to say, many of mine don't, because they diet!), and also keep a journal to allow reflection.
And now, just over 12 months on, I will never look back. I know diets are a thing of the past for me. I'm not stick-thin, but I'm a reasonable healthy size 10-12. and I've given up the ghost of being a size 8-10 again (I'm 37 god damn it, why would I need to be?!).
But ultimately, I no longer stress about food and weight and consider myself a failure because I'm not able to shed the pounds in a prescriptive way - I have an overall healthy relationship to food, and I EAT WHAT I WANT! And boy does that feel good!
So good luck to all those who have this journey ahead, and are fresh on the path, and for those other intuitive eaters who read this blog, I would be really interested if they have any tips of their own that they would like to add for newcomers?
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