So I’ll start by saying I don’t believe in diets.  Obviously I’m not saying I don’t think they exist as that would be plain silly but I don’t think they are healthy for us. I’m not talking about healthy in view of what you eat on them but more for our mental health.  In fact I think they are quite the opposite and quite damaging so have avoided them like the plague.  

I could qualify this statement by saying that diets don’t work for people who suffer from ‘disordered eating’ but I’d probably argue that if you did not suffer from an eating disorder and had a healthy relationship with food then you are unlikely to ever need to go on a diet.  Yes, believe it or not, there are some people out there that naturally regulate what they eat, so if they have a lot of food one day they cut down the next or perhaps they will just eat what they need.  It reminds me when I took my niece, 13 years old at the time, on a cruise.  Now for those that have been on a cruise you’ll be aware that you can virtually eat 24/7 and have a massive buffet with so many attractive looking foods available. Despite this my niece seemed to eat portions according to how hungry she was and not according to how many foods she wanted to try!  I was astonished as remembered back to when I was 13, I would have HAD to try a bit of everything!  But I can now see that back then was around the time I developed disordered eating.

For those that have not heard of this new fangled condition – there’s certainly nothing new about it but it’s now been given a name, there’s a great blog post that sums it up in a nutshell:

 Disordered eating–the less serious, but much more common version of an eating disorder–is an unhealthy, obsessive relationship with food. Disordered eating is so common that it’s arguably, and unfortunately, “normal.”

I made a conscious decision years ago to accept myself for how I am and accepted that my weight can go up and down and that I am not defined by how I appear on the outside but who I am as a person. With this acceptance actually led to weight loss and to me eating much healthier and ditching the negative connotations I had with food. Yes, I still put on weight if I consume too much but I also lose weight, it’s never more than a few pounds either way but this is not a conscious effort and just happens.

We need to go back in time to look at my journey. I was very fortunate to grow up in the era where most things were homemade from raw ingredients so very little over processed or packaged food for me. We were also lucky to have a decent size garden so we grew a massive range of fruits, vegetables and herbs and we kept chickens so nice fresh eggs. Genetically modified foods were not around and none of this pumping water into chickens malarky went on.

I’m not sure about the rest of you but all those hormones swirling around in me seemed to warp and knock my self-esteem and I was suddenly concerned what people thought of me. I developed a need to be liked and be popular – probably what every kid wants but I think some more than others.  It would be unfair to solely blame hormones as other factors were at play.

Talk to any tall, slim, attractive girl and see if how she looks has made her happy.  I think you may find that they have their own problems from looking that way. I’ve had friends who’ve struggled to make friends as other girls would think they were ‘up themselves’ or ‘who does she think she is’ just based on how they look. People who think these things are obviously insecure and not at peace with how they look but still it’s not exactly their fault if they have pretty faces and lovely figures.  I’ve also known girls to be bullied because of being ‘too beautiful’.  So the grass is not greener on the other side.

I used to try and hide the fact I was fat by wearing tents. I thought by wearing a tent people would not see that I was fat – in reality, when you are bigger you actually look slimmer by wearing more fitting clothes!  I remember one period of my life, probably early twenties when people would ask if I had a boyfriend, I would look at them in disbelief that they had asked a question like that and would think ‘Look at me, of course I don’t’ but outwardly I’d make a joke of it by saying ‘No, I haven’t found anyone good enough for me yet’ or ‘I’m far too happy being single, I don’t want to be tied down’. I really did believe that no one would want to go out with me because of the way I looked. In reality I gave off the ‘I don’t want  a boyfriend vibe’ and ‘Don’t come near me’ so there were guys interested but I acted like I wasn’t bothered by them so they didn’t pursue me.  Them not pursuing me was my affirmation that they didn’t find me attractive.  Now I look back and see how silly my line of thinking was and how warped my outlook was but back then it was my reality. Self fulfilling prophecies really do have a lot to answer for.

With age sometimes comes wisdom but also I’m quite an introspective and a self analysing kind of gal and I consciously made the decision that I wasn’t going to let food control me anymore and I decided to be nice to myself and give myself a bit of acceptance and self love.  I decided that if people didn’t like me because I was fat then that was their lookout. And in reality, I’d suspect there are very few people in the world that would not like someone due to their size and if they were that shallow then why would I be bothered what they thought anyway?  Ahhh…but you do when you can’t see the wood for the trees.

We can be our own worst enemies and critics – why do we allow that?  Just think of all that wasted energy you spend on criticising and hating yourself, where does it get you?  Why not focus our energies on learning to love ourselves as we are and gaining acceptance of ourselves?

I now allow myself to put weight on and not care and as a result my weight usually naturally goes down.  If I fancy eating a bar of lard for breakfast I will and I refuse to feel guilty for doing so (although I can safely say I don’t get the urge to), if I want 5 plates full of buffet food at that party I will have it and guess what I may feel a bit full and wish I hadn’t ate quite so much but do I feel guilty and start counting up all the calories I’ve consumed? NO because let me tell you this, I prefer to live my life to the full and not waste my time on all these insecurities and fear.  As a result I have a very healthy self esteem, I like myself (mostly, it wouldn’t be human if we didn’t have the odd wobble here and there) and above all I am a pretty healthy size. I don’t know whether it’s an age thing but the foods I’m attracted to now has completely changed to what I craved before, so now the thought of a nice healthy salad is far more mouth watering and attractive than a chocolate bar.  They say you get out what you put in so feed your body with great nutrition and you’re going to get more out of it than feeding yourself with crap!

Bit of a long way of getting here but that’s why I don’t think diets will work for someone suffering with disordered eating.  To lose weight you first need to accept who you are and stop letting your size determine who you are as a person.  Instead of wasting time calorie counting, be constructive and spend the time learning to love yourself for who you are and put the value on who you are as a person and not on what you look like in the mirror! Break your negative relationship with food and you may just find you start choosing healthier options and will naturally lose weight. Or let me throw you a curve ball, you may even start to love and embrace yourself for who you, rolls of fat and all, and realise that you do not need to define yourself by your size anymore but who you are as a person!  Your  new found inner confidence will then ooze out which is what people will be attracted to!