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Some people assume that The F*ck It Diet is unnecessarily extreme.

They assume it’s a steady diet of donuts, McDonald’s, and fried ice cream for the rest of our short little lives. That we’re a group of lazy anarchists who are reveling in our newfound food-related health problems, and not taking any personal responsibility for our health, and who refuse to make any attempts at self-improvement.

Or they think: Why can’t we just be balanced? Why can’t we just enjoy cake every so often but mostly try to eat a healthy, moderate diet?

The answer is because: we’ve tried that.

Also, chronic dieting is somewhere on the eating disorder spectrum, so for people who’ve become obsessed with dieting, trying “to be balanced” doesn’t work. It doesn’t heal us. And ironically, it perpetuates feeling totally out of control with food.

There is nothing wrong with true balance, but for many people, “just trying to be balanced” becomes the new diet. Not to mention that after years of restriction and dieting, balance is eating a hell of a lot, for a good chunk of time.

The beautiful thing I found, once I truly allowed myself to eat with total abandon, is that my body actually spoke up. After years of bingeing and restricting and bingeing again, once I stopped judging myself for eating and stopped trying to micromanage my weight, my body actually finally felt fed, and my lifelong food obsession melted away.

Note: I never thought that could happen. I thought I was born a food addict, and would die a food addict.

The F*ck It Diet is the (seemingly) counter-intuitive way to stop feeling insane around food. Allowance paves way for easier, nourishing health choices, and getting in tune with what your body wants and needs. It’s a way to get to a place where you can easily feed yourself a varied diet, without too much overthinking, and get on with your life.

However, I know it feels more complicated for some people. I understand why people still fear certain foods, especially if they don’t feel well, or if certain foods make them feel sick. And some foods really do make people feel sick. I understand this first hand: wanting to heal your obsession with food and dieting, but wondering if you’re actually causing your own pain and misery, and fearing that you need to be avoiding certain foods.

And so here are a couple things I want to remind you about food, weight, dieting, and health that may calm you down.

The biggest issue with dieting is assuming that weight is the cause of our health problems. That’s like blaming coughing for causing your cold. Weight can be symptom of underlying health problems, (and it can also just be… your body). But either way, focusing on weight loss is not your best bet to improve health, not matter what.

Stress from weight stigma has also been shown to cause the health problems that are blamed on the weight itself – including increased mortality.

The other issue with dieting is assuming that you can’t trust your hunger and your appetite, and that the less you eat the better. No. That makes no sense. That is not good for you. That is not supportive of health or a good relationship with food. It’s not supportive of a strong metabolism, or good digestion, or good sleep, or anything really.

The Fuck It Diet is calorie positive. Calories aren’t a problem or the problem. Same with carbs, sugar, fat, and protein. Food is good for us.

So… once you can step out of both of those ways of thinking (demonizing weight and demonizing hunger/food) you can eat however makes you feel good. For people who have food sensitivities or who feel better eating a certain way, you can do whatever feels good and right, as long as you have healed your relationship to food and weight. Does that make sense?

And once you have healed your relationship to food, if a certain food makes you feel terrible, you can re-evaluate your relationship to it. Do you want to eat it if it makes you feel bad? Sometimes that may be yes, and often that may be no.

Health is so much more nuanced than we hope. Really it’s a complicated combination of genetics, immunity, environmental factors (chemicals, pollutants, heavy metals, etc), socio-economic factors, and stress. Motherf*cking stress.

Stress is a major determinant of health. Stress stress stress stress. Stress from your high powered job, but even more: Stress from being or feeling marginalized. Stress from not having enough money and constantly being in survival mode. Stress from being treated poorly. Stress from lingering effects of trauma.

Stress affects your gut, and your immunity, and your overall health.

Now… don’t stress over stress. And don’t blame yourself for stress. A lot of stress is not that easy to just breathe away (even though I do believe in breathing). But understand that it’s all complicated, it’s not your fault, and food is often the least offensive part of our lifestyles.

Under-eating actually causes health problems too: gut problems, hormonal problems, nutrient deficiencies, inflammation, anxiety, etc.

There is also something called a nocebo affect, where your fear over a certain food can actually give you negative symptoms when you eat it.

If health is your goal, healing your relationship to food is still an imperative step towards well-rounded health.

That being said, not all food is great for everyone. And not all food is great. (I don’t actually believe ‘all food is equal’. For instance, for instance… food with pesticides in it aren’t great for us, and worse for some depending on how efficient their body is at processing them out. But… at this point, you can’t avoid pesticides unless you live in an actual bubble. And even attempts at avoiding them requires lots of money to spend on organic food.) All food doesn’t need to be equal in order for you to be allowed to eat what you crave.

It is insane and crazy-making to always try to eat perfect food.

You can eat anything, even if it doesn’t fit into anyone’s definition of healthy. You can just eat and calm down about it. It’s more important to feed yourself than to constantly stress out over if your your food is healthy enough. The body wants to thrive. It wants to be resilient. As I’ve said above… stress over your eating actually perpetuates some of the health problems you may be experiencing, too.

Healing your dysfunctional  relationship with food and weight, will help you eat in a way that supports your health, whatever that looks like.

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I am in the last stages of finalizing my book, and I just found a glaring error about weight and starvation which shows my bias and assumptions about weight.

In the book I wrote that if a famine never ended, you would eventually become emaciated and die.

BUT THAT ISN’T TRUE.

If a famine never ended, you could still die in 8-12 weeks, even if you’re fat, because your body would break down your muscles to convert to ketones to keep your brain and body running, and in the absence of food, would weaken your heart so much that you’d die. If you still had some access to food, and were eating only a little, the same thing could happen, just slower.

You can also die just from not having the electrolytes to keep your heart working.

You will die from malnutrition whether you are skinny or fat.

And if you don’t need to be skinny to die of starvation, guess what the fuck that means about dieting? Still think weight and weight loss are fully within our control?!?!

Also, the fact that I had it wrong in my book (a book that talks a lot about how weight stigma affects our relationship with food) is scaryyyyyy to meeee. It also just goes to show how deep weight stigma and weight assumptions run.

(And yes, I just emailed my editor in a panic that this HAD TO BE CHANGED, even though it is VERY last minute.)

So while we are at it, let’s talk about some more weight facts:

You can have anorexia in a fat body.

Anorexia does not make everyone skinny.

You can still be fat even if you barely eat anything.

You will still experience the same effects of starvation and malnutrition, no matter what your external weight set point is.

A person’s weight does not give you any information about how they eat or their health.

Our weight is not really as easily manipulated and controlled as we think – we have weight set ranges that are set by genetics. The body does not want to be above or below our particular range.

Most (if not all) weight loss studies have only looked at the short term results. And the ones that have looked at long term results have seen weight regain and poorer health because of the diet and weight cycling and stress/stigma.

Every health problem under the sun seems to be blamed on a high weight, but weight is just a scapegoat. Sometimes weight gain is a symptom of other health issues, but blaming the issues on weight is not only missing the mark, but also may be causing the very health problems it claims to be fixing.

Yes, weight stigma is terrible for us, and the health problems blamed on weight (including increased mortality!) are more likely caused by the weight stigma itself.

Weight stigma is the real national health crisis, not “obesity”. “Obesity” being called a health crisis alone is weight stigma – see how cyclical this gets???

In addition, weight cycling and dieting are detrimental to our health. Especially yo-yo dieting or restrictive fad diets that are focused on weight loss.

People can and do improve their health without losing weight.

People also hurt their health by focusing on weight loss.

And I haven’t even touched on the MENTAL HEALTH ASPECT of weight focus, dieting, weight stigma, and body fixation.

I can’t believe that I got that tidbit about starvation so so so wrong, even with all of the other things that I know about weight, health, and weight stigma. So here is to doing better, here is to learning, and here is to listening.

The truth about weight stigma and fat phobia, is that it permeates the very air we breathe. None of us can avoid it. We all have it and can perpetuate it, even with good intentions, and we need to just be super aware of our assumptions.

I’ve probably missed some other essential facts too, so, message me on instagram and let me know what I’m forgetting about the BASIC PHYSICAL FACTS ABOUT WEIGHT AND WEIGHT STIGMA.

Oh and pre-order my book! I promise I’m fixing that mistake! The book tackles weight stigma and diet culture! It really does!

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Some of the angriest comments I get on instagram are from people who swear that the keto diet is helping them and that I’m soooo incredibly ignorant and/or deceitful for saying that the body prefers carbs.

However, for every comment where someone is swearing by keto, there are twenty more comments with people saying that they too tried keto, with hope bursting in their hearts, only to find that after a few months it had fucked up their metabolism, hormones, energy levels, sanity, and has been really hard to recover from, mentally and physically.

I’ve spent a long time trying to decide how to be diplomatic and to not claim to know what’s best for everyone’s body. Because– everyone is different. Some people are allergic to fucking tomatoes. We are all different.

I’m also not a doctor or nutritionist or dietitian so I have no authority or desire to weigh in on diets that people claim are medically necessary and helpful to them. TFID is concerned with the mental and spiritual ramifications of chronic dieting, it just so happens that there are very physical consequences to dieting, too.

So in my attempts to be diplomatic, I say things like: I’m so glad you feel good on keto, but this is an account for people trying to heal from chronic dieting or disordered eating, and your comments about keto do not belong here. And many many people have had opposite experiences on keto.

I’ve also compared keto to wheelchairs or mobility devices. Meaning, just because a select number of people are benefitted (read: children with seizures, maybe), that doesn’t mean that it cures any underlying condition, and also doesn’t mean that people who don’t need keto/mobility devices should be using them, in fact if they do, it will probably make things worse in the long run. (I also asked Anna Sweeney, MS, RD, LDN, CEDRD-S, who uses a wheelchair, if this was a cool comparison and she gave me the green light.)

But the most honest thing I can say about the keto diet is: what the fuck do you think I’m going to say? 

Keto is a very, very restrictive diet, and therefore it has no place in or on or around The Fuck It Diet. It has no place in the lives of people recovering from disordered eating or eating disorders.

And if you are someone who is on the keto diet and you feel great, then you don’t need the Fuck It Diet either. Why are we fighting? If your diet is truly supporting your mental and physical health: that’s great. Round of applause. Most people don’t have that experience, and I’d love for you to check in with me in two or three years and tell me how you’re doing, too.

More frankly: I don’t care how you eat, Pamela. Eat a no-carb-diet to your heart’s content. I have no desire to evangelize you. If it is ‘working’ for you – I’m not going to try and tell you it’s not working.

If you want to know what I think, the short term “benefits” of the keto diet, and any diet for that matter, are just that: short term. The long term effects can be physically and mentally devastating, and have yet to be truly studied.

So, where does this leave us?

Do you need to do keto?

If you want to recover from chronic dieting: NO. HELL NO.

But could keto cure your chronic health problems? 

Probably not. It was shown to help children with epilepsy in the 1920s, but it still comes with side effects (kidney strain, hypoglycemia, dehydration, GI issues, etc). Are those side effects worth it for kids with epilepsy? Yes! Potentially! Is it the cure-all that people claim it is? I don’t think so.

Will keto help you lose weight?

Temporarily, yes. Like all diets. But now we are getting into our usual TFID rigemroll. Diets backfire longterm. It’s how we are wired. And, diets and weight loss can actually negatively impact health, against all our cultural common knowledge. We are all confused about weight loss and health. We are assuming weight loss is always good for us – often it’s not .

But more importantly, the psychology of extreme dieting, even for ‘health’, is almost identical to eating disorders. So if your lifestyle is negatively impacting your mental health… it’s not a good idea. It’s not sustainable. What’s health if it doesn’t take into account mental health and stress levels?

The psychology of extreme dieting is all consuming – you have to buy in. You have to believe that what you are doing could really help you. You have to believe that maybe it already really is helping you, but you just haven’t experienced the benefits yet. I have personally done this over and over and over. I’ve gone from extreme to extreme diet (Keto, Paleo, Raw Vegan, etc etc etc) and I always had to buy in. I had to believe. I understand. I empathize. I really do.

If you feel that keto truly is helping you, that’s great. But no, it doesn’t belong on or near the f**k it diet. And yes, the body prefers carbs to keep you alive. You need stress hormones to run on little or no carbs.

Stress is not what we want.