A Fond Farewell…by Liimu
No, I’m not done blogging and my weight loss journey is certainly still ongoing. I’m not going anywhere any time soon. So, what am I saying “Farewell” to? To dieting and all my diet paraphernalia. I deleted all my apps, tossed all my magazines, even cancelled my “Biggest Loser” season pass.
Part of becoming an intuitive eater is letting go of the diet mentality. It’s funny, because there’s a saying in recovery that in order to successfully achieve sobriety, you have to let go of any reservation in your mind that you might one day successfully drink again. Similarly, successfully becoming an intuitive eater means letting go of any reservation that you might one day successfully diet again. Fortunately for me, I have experience with doing this in sobriety and know firsthand that adopting this mentality of full surrender really does work and leads to success. So now, I just have to apply this to intuitive eating.
For the first few months, I did harbor a reservation – I felt like if this “intuitive eating thing” didn’t work out, I could always hop on a diet and lose the weight real quick. That has changed. This “intuitive eating thing” is now the only thing. It’s more important to me, even, than the weight loss, which I now see as a likely by product of successfully becoming an intuitive eater. I look forward to that happening, but am even more thrilled to be freed from the bondage of the dieting/binging cycle. For example, this week I learned how to sense my own fullness during a meal and how to stop before I hit fullness – that is, to stop eating once I was no longer hungry. CRAZY, man. I can’t even tell you how long it’s been since I’ve done that at one MEAL (unless the food was gross) let alone, an entire week of eating.
When I stopped smoking, one of the tricks I used to stay stopped was to identify myself as a “nonsmoker” as much as possible. So, here I am now, becoming a new person once again – an intuitive eater who simply doesn’t diet.
Post a comment if you want more information on intuitive eating. I’d be happy to help you begin your journey!
