Struggling to legalise and be healthy

I don't want to be fat any more. I'm at my heaviest weight  and I'm also not loving the way I'm eating either. Even if you take size out the equation for a moment (hard to do when I'm feeling frumpy) I still don't love the way that the food I eat is making me feel. As you'll know, I'm a big fan of Beyond Chocolate - it just makes perfect sense that this is the right way to eat. But, of the ten principles, I am still - six years later - stuck on 'eat what you want'. That's the one that most people dive into in the beginning, eating chocolate and cake and pizza and chips with gay abandon until they realise that actually they want something more nutritious as well. Except I don't seem to have got to the wanting something more nutritious stage. I still want chocolate and cake all the time. I'm still drawn to it every time and I still overeat every time and I don't live in hope that it will ever change.

Now, having been amongst the BC community for a few years now, I'm pretty sure I know what the responses would be if I was to say this on the forum or to Sophie or Audrey (the creators of Beyond Chocolate). I would expect the responses to be - and if I'm wrong and people want to throw some other theories in, please do! - that either I haven't legalised these forbidden foods I'm overeating or that I'm not eating them whilst also observing the other principles. And both of these suggestions would be correct.

When I eat chocolate or cake, I tend to do something else at the same time - watch TV, surf the net, play on my phone. Or otherwise they will be wolfed down standing at the kitchen counter whilst I'm making a cup of tea. Two or three doughnuts can easily be gone in less time than it takes for the kettle to boil. I don't want to savour or enjoy them - I just want to stuff them down. It's habitual. If I was truly following the BC principles, I would be allowing myself those foods, but waiting until I was hungry to eat them and then putting them on a plate and focussing and then stopping when I've had enough. But I don't. I always tell myself I will but then, when it comes to it, I tell myself 'maybe next time instead'. I just eat until I feel sick or until it's gone.

The problem is that it's still the Last Supper mentality. The last time I'll binge or eat so much of those foods because tomorrow I'll do better. Tomorrow I'll eat like a normal person. Except I've told myself that every day for the past twenty years and discovering Beyond Chocolate and the concept of intuitive eating hasn't actually got rid of it. Instead of thinking 'tomorrow I will diet' it's just 'tomorrow I will eat intuitively'. Not today. Not now. I just need to do it once more. This is where legalising food comes in and that's something I still really struggle with. I told myself I've legalised this food but I haven't.

Legalising forbidden foods is about acknowledging that you can have these foods whenever you want. And so, by not restricting your options or creating a 'I better have it now because tomorrow I will be on a diet' situation, you should be able to choose what you really want. It means that all foods are equal and don't have guilt attached to them. Beyond Chocolate suggests a way to do this is to stock up on large amounts of your forbidden food so that you can be reassured that it's always there if you want it. This is a great idea and I know it's helped lots of people. But it didn't work for me and I felt like a failure. Every time I'd go in the kitchen, I'd have some. There was loads - no one would even know it was missing. But of course I wasn't combining it with the other principles - just grabbing it and eating it without breaking my stride.

I didn't actually really believe I even needed to legalise any foods purely because I never really dieted and therefore I always allowed myself to eat the food. Why was I eating so much if I wasn't responding to dieting? Well, partly because just by planning to diet or 'be good' I was anticipating scarcity and therefore falling into the Last Supper trap (I blogged about this more in my Deprivation Without Dieting post). Also the crux of the matter is that, whilst I believe that I can eat these foods whenever I want, what I don't believe is that I can eat these foods whenever I want, in whatever quantity I want and not suffer for it. By 'suffer' I mean gain weight, feel sick, bloat up, lack energy, damage my teeth etc. And so I find myself in a bit of a chicken and egg situation; I will only stop eating such high quantities of these foods when I have legalised them BUT in order to legalise them I have to be able to prove to myself that I can safely eat them in the quantities I desire (which is going to be huge quantities because I'll only want less when I can prove that I can eat enormous quantities without suffering...). And so round and round I go. I want to eat less of these foods because I think they are negatively affecting my health in the quantities I eat them but how else do I legalise them? I'm still choosing with my taste buds and not with my whole body and I need to be kind to my body because it's not in a good state. Some days I just wish chocolate and cake didn't exist and I didn't have a choice at all. 

Deprivation without dieting

This week I've dipped my toe into the world of e-books and downloaded the Kindle app to my phone. The first book I downloaded is Gorgeously Full Fat as I love Sarah's blog of the same name and I'm really looking forward to reading more of her story. The second - which I have got stuck into straight away - is Josie's Spinardi's How to Have Your Cake and Your Skinny Jeans Too. This was recommended to me by a fellow Beyond Chocolater and so far I'm really enjoying it. I've read a fair few books on intuitive eating (or whatever you want to call it) and they have all been excellent in their way but some of them have been a little heavy going for my tastes. This is something I've always loved about Beyond Chocolate - the book is really accessible - and Josie's book is the same. The person who mentioned the book to me did say that it draws upon lots of research and I did wonder if that would make it a bit dry but it really doesn't.

This isn't going to be a review of How to Have Your Cake and Your Skinny Jeans Too as I'm not yet finished with it. I'm about two-thirds of the way through. I must admit that when I started reading it, I did wonder if I had erred in my choice. She makes it clear in her introduction that she is only dealing with overeating in response to dieting rather than emotional eating (she's going to deal with the latter in a second book which I'm really looking forward to reading) and I am definitely an emotional eater rather than a deprived dieter! The thing is that, unlike a lot of women who come to explore intuitive eating, I don't really have a history of dieting. It would be a lie to say I have never dieted, but it barely features in my eating history.

In terms of commercial diets, the only one I have done is Slimming World. And when I say that I 'did' it, I mean for about two days. I went to my first meeting on a Monday evening, got weighed and bought a bunch of books before sitting through what was probably the dullest evening of my life going round the room and everyone saying how much they had (or hadn't) lost that week. Tuesday and Wednesday I stuck to the diet and by lunchtime on Thursday I admitted how bloody miserable I was and jacked it in. Maybe that was because I hadn't stuck with it long enough to learn how to make syn-free pizza out of boiled potatoes or whatever but I don't think so. Other than that, my only forays into dieting have been good old-fashioned calorie counting. But again, those efforst have been few and far between and have lasted for well under a week each. So I'm certainly not someone that's lost 3 stone on a diet - in fact I doubt I've lost 3lb that way. That's not to say I've never lost weight; I have...several times. My weight has yo-yoed up and down within a 3-stone range multiple times during my adult years. But it's never being through dieting. It's been when I've been happy in my life and food just hasn't been something I have been obsessing over (and when I've been doing some kind of regular exercise) - so basically intuitive eating before I even knew what it was. Thing is, although I know I can do intuitive eating and that the weight does fall off that way, it's actually a lot harder to do when you're trying to do it.!

Most of my disordered eating history comes in the form of binge eating or emotional eating. It's rare I've been on the opposite side of the pendulum (dieting) but overeating - that I'm good at. So, I'm really excited for Josie Spinardi's second book as I think that will be really relevant to me. But, I got stuck into her first one anyway. Initially I thought that it was a good read but not really relevant to me as I don't diet, and haven't really done so in the past, so surely none of my overeating is the sort that's a direct reaction to dieting/restriction. However, the thought suddenly occurred to me that it actually is still relevant...

The type of overeating she refers to is the type that is a response to deprivation - the fact that you eat the chocolate because you've deprived yourself of it on a diet or (what she calls Eating Cuz You Ate) continuing to overeat 'forbidden' foods because you know you're going to deprive yourself as soon as you get 'back on the wagon' tomorrow. And it's this second bit that applies to me. I don't ever diet or deprive myself but, subconsciously, I do plan to. I find myself thinking that I might as well eat lots of cake/chocolate/biscuits/crisps today because tomorrow I'm going to 'be good' (not specifically go on a diet but a promise that tomorrow I'll do Beyond Chocolate 'properly' or make healthier choices etc). And I really think that my brain sees this as deprivation in exactly the same way as it would if I were on a diet. I never make that fresh start because I sabotage it before it begins and I don't think I ever properly understood why. So maybe you don't have to diet or restrict your food to feel deprived - just thinking about it is enough. And that would totally explain why pretty much every single day for the last twenty years I have said 'today is the last day I overeat - tomorrow I'll have a fresh start' and that fresh start never happens because every single day just ends up being one more 'last day'. That's a lot of last suppers and probably very few of them have been enjoyed because I'm shovelling them in in anticipation of self-imposed scarcity rather than actually enjoying them in the knowledge that I can chose to eat those foods if and when I want.

Even six years after discovering intuitive eating, all I still want to eat is the sugary, junky stuff and maybe that is down to this subconscious planned deprivation too. I see other women on the intuitive eating journey who have now lost their taste for these foods and genuinely find themselves fancying fresh, wholesome food more often than not. And my gremlin tells me that that's because they are doing it 'properly' and this is what I'm supposed to be eating too. But, firstly, everyone's journey and dietary preferences are different. And, secondly, this subconscious belief that I'm supposed to end up in a place where I don't want to eat junk food seems to make me want it more because I might never eat it again once I'm doing it 'properly'. And seeing this in writing, it just sounds completely nuts. For starters, I may well still fancy these junky foods sometimes when I'm eating intuitively. And if I don't want them, then why would I want to eat them anyway? Why would I miss them if I get to a point I don't fancy them? So, surely it's a win-win? I either continue to fancy and enjoy them or I don't fancy them and then won't miss them. I'm seeing this as the same as being deprived of these foods and it's not the same at all. It's about choice. My choice. I just need to be brave and let myself choose based on what I really want and not on what I think I can't have tomorrow, or next week, or next year. I can have it all. Or not. It's my choice.