What would happen if I stopped dieting?
Do you even know how to eat without monitoring your every bite? How would your life change if you didn’t count your calories/macros and exercise accordingly?
I want this for you. A life of dieting doesn’t bring anything but insecurity and a lack of self-love. In order to help you cross the bridge, let’s clear the air about what could happen if you stopped dieting. When I say that you stop dieting, I mean that you move to a place that eats what and how you want without following society’s standards. You follow the data. You follow what you know scientifically your body needs to function and you pay attention to your own intuition. See what I mean? This doesn’t mean that you graduate to eating nothing but Doritos on the couch (of course, that should be allowed if it’s your soul food).
When you are feeding your soul and your body appropriately with your intuition, there are three possibilities of what could happen:
You could gain weight. This is the one you’re terrified of, right? Gaining MORE weight?? Well, this one only actually happens if you were underweight in the first place. When we lose weight in an unhealthy way, we take away not just from our body fat but our bones, ligaments, muscles, tissues, tendons… ALL OF THE PARTS that make up our body. When you’re underweight because you aren’t fueling your body enough, your body will steal from the other parts to survive. When it doesn’t have enough food to create energy, it makes energy from what you have. So yes, you could gain weight, but consider WHAT you are gaining. Now if you’re healing your relationship with food and most of this comes from your “soul” food that you never let yourself eat, yes, it could be stored as fat for a little bit. BUT, as your body consistently gets food from a VARIETY of sources and it builds itself back into a place of safety, it will sort out this extra weight. Because of the law of habituation, your soul food will slowly become less and less of an obsession for you which will then help you to eat it in moderation. Sometimes you have to let your soul have its moment of freedom here in order to truly unconditionally feed your body.
Your weight could stay the same. Maybe you’re actually at a healthy weight. Maybe your frantic dieting had so much flex in it with your soul food before that now all you’re taking away is the guilt! Now that your body is in a place of peace (which comes from your mind being at peace) you will be shocked by the beautiful things that start to take place. Your sleep will improve, your acne will start to heal and stay away, your teeth clenching and knotted muscles will subside… ah! The possibilities are endless when you take away the stress that you’re always doing something wrong!
You could lose weight. WHAAAAAT?? What wonderful news, yes? But it's true! Your constant state of dieting (which often turns into binges) could be a state of holding lots of extra calories. When we regulate our blood sugar, it keeps us from going into adrenal fatigue and overworking our pancreas which results in lower cortisol. This process of peace will keep your body from holding onto the extra calories releasing anything that doesn’t need to be there anymore. When we restrict our food, our body goes into a survival mode and holds onto the calories we take in to be able to keep us alive in future times of famine. When we finally lose ourselves to eating after these long periods of restriction, we usually overeat as that primal part of our brain takes over telling us to take in as much as we can. Then, the body saves it again, because it doesn’t trust that you’ll be getting food again any time soon. So, by stopping the dieting war, you COULD end up losing weight if this describes your food situation.
While I don’t know your specific situation with food, I do wish you the absolute freedom you deserve! You’re halfway there now that you have familiarized yourself with the possibilities of what could happen. Knowledge dispels fear! Good luck out there!
