One of most common, yet strangest, things I have noticed with people learning to eat normally, is that even a year into the process, they are still waiting for the day when they won’t be hungry anymore.

They often don’t fully realize it, but there is still a little part of them that is waiting to be healed from their hunger, as if it is a symptom that must be cured. Part of us believes that the real goal of all of this, is to end up losing our appetites.

That’s because it has been so consistently ingrained in us that having an appetite is unhealthy, and that not wanting to eat is healthy. We think, that if we can re-feed ourselves enough, and fix our metabolisms, that eventually we will get to a time and a state when we aren’t hungry anymore.

And I am here to tell you that is never going to happen.

That is also what lots of us attempted to do with obsessive “intuitive eating”. We thought that if we were really being intuitive, we would not want to eat. If we were really listening, we wouldn’t want to eat much at all. It is something to do with the unspoken belief that having an appetite is weak.

Now, I have written things in this book that might have subconsciously added to that underlying belief or hope. I say things like “eat yourself to the other side”. What other side? The side where you aren’t as ravenous or afraid of or fixated on food. But what I mean is, eat to get yourself out of famine mode. Famine mode is the extreme, biological, constant fixation on, and need for, extra food. We don’t want to live in a survival famine mode forever. However, even once you “get to the other side” where food is just food, you will still have an appetite. Because an appetite is a sign of health and a functioning metabolism.

Having an appetite or wanting to eat is not weak, it’s… being alive. And it is never going to go away. And if it does, go to your doctor because you might be dying.

Ohhh, the amount of times I have wondered if I should go to back school for nutrition, just so I could tell you I’d gone to school for nutrition. 

Or go back to school for psychology, just so I could tell you I went to school for psychology, only to keep writing the same things I am writing now: the things that interest and fascinate me.

I am not a medical professional, and as much as I have considered forcing myself to be, I’m really not meant to be. I’d hate it.

I’m a writer and storyteller. And I would also be some kind of semi-Christo-buddist-ish forest priestess if anyone would let me, but I guess I should just become a yoga teacher instead.

But more importantly, I used be a food addict — and after healing myself through relatively unconventional means, I am fascinated by the spiritual and emotional causes and ramifications of chronic dieting and diet culture. And I write about it. I give advice. Advice that has to come with a shit-ton of disclaimers because, I am not a medical professional.

The things that healed me more than anything else were: listening to my own body, unlearning what I learned about health and weight, changing the way I looked at beauty and weight, facing my fears of weight, not listening to certain medical professionals, doing some creative recovery, and being willing to be imperfect and make imperfect things. Those are not things I think a nutrition degree could give me. Same with run-of-the-mill psychology. I wanna talk soul and purpose shit.

The reason the Fuck It Diet worked, when no diet, doctor, self-help guru, or even intuitive eating book could, is because it tackled two things at once:

First it tackled the biological and physical reason that keeps people obsessed and bingeing with food.

And at the exact same time, it addressed the emotional, spiritual, and cultural reasons that we become obsessed with food and weight.

I cite the scientists that need to be cited when talking about the biological and metabolic parts of this process (often Linda Bacon or Traci Mann), but I cite them so I can talk about what I really wanna talk about: the spiritual, the emotional, the energetic, the somatic, the intuitive, and resting. Because that’s what healed me. And food. Always food.