Author: Caroline

young and the resting

This Has Always Been Magical to Me

A lot of my work these days incorporates – what I like to call – some “magic”.

The basic physical and biological part of the Fuck It Diet is straight forward. The physical part alone is game-changing. So if all you take from The Fuck It Diet is that you need to eat more and trust your body, believe me, that’s good too.

But everything else that comes after that… all the working through emotions and thoughts, I have begun to put in my more magical, woo-woo terms. I talk about energy, and chakras, and surrender. I teach an intuition intensive, and my monthly membership site is part badass anti-diet school, part energy work extravaganzzzzaaa.

But I’ve been so afraid to alienate people. I think this message is so important for sooooo many, manyyyy dieters to hear, that I am afraid the woo will scare off the people who really need to hear it but don’t wanna open up my box of magic.

But energy work is not that out there. I have a therapist who does energy work. She just makes it sound more “legit”. She uses tapping to stimulate the different sides of the brain to process old emotions and experiences. She has me put my hands over different chakras which brings down stress…

But actually, all emotional processing is a sort of “energy work”.

I could make it sound more clinical, and sometimes I try. But I… well… I like a little earth magic. I think we are all really disconnected from the earth, our bodies, and trusting we are being guided. That’s how we get into this shit-storm in the first place… disconnection and lack of trust.

I also try to explain that energy work is actually pretty simple: It’s about guiding yourself to be present in your body long enough to feel and process old emotions and blocks that are keeping you stuck believing things you don’t want to believe. That was a run-on sentence, but is still the simple, straight-forward, run-on version.

The Fuck It Diet has always been magical

I don’t mention this all the time, but the Fuck It Diet was fully an intuitive process for me.

I had a sense – a strong sense – and I followed it.

And yearrrrs before it came to me, I had been legit praying to the forces that be, sometimes in a church, sometimes in a field, to help me become “normal with food”. I didn’t know what that meant. And I definitely didn’t know how important the body positive part would be. I didn’t know what it would actually take to get to normal eating. But I wanted it. It was my big, big, big intention.

I had my eyes on the prize, I just didn’t know what that would entail.

I was always spiritually seeking. Whatever my belief system was at the time, I was asking for guidance.

I wanted peace. I wanted guidance. I wanted to get to the bottom of the thing. Of course my way of trying to do that, for years, was dieting and lots of panic and anxiety. But I knew something was off and was seeking seeking seeking.

Epiphany

The Fuck It Diet for me was a legit spiritual epiphany. I have never called it anyting else because I don’t know what else it could possibly be called. In a moment of deep misery, I understood it all so much more clearly. And it changed my life.

The months and years that followed included a lot of me walking blind, feeling some truth, and then trying to explain it to you guys, hoping that it translated.

In the beginning it didn’t even have a name – it wasn’t called The Fuck It Diet yet – it was just this sense of “eating myself to the other side” and the new, deep understanding that caring about weight was the reason it had never worked when I’d tried before.

The Artist’s Way

Months after my epiphany, the book The Artist’s Way found itself into my … kindle. (Via my mom and a book club she reluctantly was peer pressured into joining. Jump to the night before her first day, “CAN I DOWNLOAD THIS BOOK ONTO YOUR KINDLE?!”)

This book changed my life and spirituality forever. It taught me serious surrender that – through my newly epiphanied lens – also applied amazingly to food and body image and perfectionism of all kinds. It helped me believe and connect to more in a really tangible and practical way.

Exercises from The Artist’s Way accidentally this book gave the Fuck It Diet its name.

The Fuck It Diet wouldn’t have existed without a trust that I was being guided, and a trust that I could start sharing before my message or writing was perfect.

Creativity has become a big base of my spirituality, on top of some mystic catholic remnants + some major woo-woo shit.

Again, chakras? That was something that I always heard about and thought: I don’t know what that is but I think I need to learn…

Energy Wa?

The energy work that I now do in Fuckiteer Academy and teach in Become Your Own Damn Guru, came next – accidentally.

I knew how important it was to learn to process emotions – old and new. That was something I had been doing for a while. (Thanks, Acting School!) I knew it was important when taking yourself through something this scary, to figure out what stressful beliefs are mucking up our minds with anxiety. I had been dabbling in so many self-help and energy work-y methods all along, now it was all about figuring out how to make it simple enough to teach to people struggling and panicking on The Fuck It Diet.

That’s what the my work with the Fuck It Diet has become. That’s why I have gone deeper down the energy-work rabbit-hole: Emotions and Beliefs.

Yes, TFID will teach you how to eat normally.

But if and when you bump up against major fear and panic… I will take out my magic box and start swinging pendulums around and tell you to put your hands on your body and direct you to feel what’s in there.

That’s just how we roll now.

You’re Not In Your Body

I am going to lay out a pretty simple concept:

None of us are actually living in our bodies.

This may not exactly be news to you. I mean, we hear some version of this over and over:

We need to be more present!

We are getting caught in our minds!

Meditate!!!!!!!!

Yea Yea Yea. I get it. Finnnnnnnnne.

But it wasn’t until I made it more physical and more visual that it actually clicked with me.

…We aren’t willing to actually sink down into our physical bodies. We don’t wanna feel what’s there. And therefore, there is a backup of uncomfortable emotions and unprocessed shit sitting in there, which makes us avoid it more.

We are unwilling to actually feel what it feels like to be in our bodies. We do not let ourselves inhabit our muscles, organs, fat, skin. And so we’re all filled with unfelt, unprocessed trauma and discomfort and emotions.

This is especially true of people with eating and body issues. There is majorrrrrr avoidance here.

And eating forces us to actually be in our bodies, so we vacillate between trying to avoid it, and being pulled to eat a lot (because we NEED TO).

If you find yourself stuck in your mind, that’s a sign that you’re not able or willing to drop down into your whole body. Your “energy” and life force is up in your head where it tries to figure out and control everything, instead of experiencing what’s down below.

Lots of people wonder why the hell I do energy work. What is it? What are you even doing?

In the simplest form, energy work is a way for me to facilitate and encourage you to be in your body and lean into old discomfort, for a short and manageable amount of time, in order to process and gain some more ease, space, tolerance, and comfort in your body.

That’s also literally the point of yoga. Yoga is not supposed to be fucking cardio. Fuck that. It is supposed to be a slowing down. A sinking in. A passive, receptive experience of inhabiting your body and processing what is in there to be processed and released.

Arguably, our stressful beliefs are attached to a lot of stuff that we don’t want to feel as well. These are blocks that get triggered by certain beliefs and thoughts. That’s what I mean by releasing beliefs: you must go into the body and feel what’s been stuck and uncomfortable in order to release it and be free from it. It’s actually really simple to do, it’s just something we don’t exactly talk about or understand.

I do energy work in Fuckiteer Academy and teach you to do your own energy work in Become Your Own Damn Guru.

This has everything to do with the Fuck It Diet and normal eating. We won’t get very far avoiding what’s in there or being ruled by our stressful, untrue beliefs…

Fuck Flattering

Seriously… Fuck flattering.

Looking back, I spent every moment since growing boobs, trying to wear the most flattering and “slimming” outfits and shirts. (I wear a bra size G, thankyouverymuch.)

Can’t wear a big shirt! I’ll look pregnant!

Must accentuate my waist without making my boobs look too big!

Must fool the world into thinking I am tinier than I am!

MUST LOOK as tiny as can be!

GOD FORBID I look ‘frumpy’!

God forbid I show the world I have a body that is anything but tiny tiny tiny and controlled and desirable and hirable and ingenue and acceptablllllle!

Must. Be. Flattering. At. All. TIMES!

Even after going on the Fuck It Diet, I still held onto this culturally ingrained “flattering” mentality.

It’s time to accept my body! I’ll let my body do whatever it needs to do! And I will jsut wear clothes that flatter it. (Read: Make it look as slim as possible)

Do not give me the benefit of the doubt. My definition of “flattering” didn’t mean “accentuating my natural curves and flattering the wonderful bigness”. It didn’t mean “taking up the space I deserve to take up, in all of my glory! Look at me stand here, wearing clothes I love and breathing into my stomach instead of sucking in!”.

No. It meant: I will wear clothes that make me look at tiny as possible.

This is not body positive. This is not accepting yourself in any form.

This is still fat-phobic.

This is still anti-body and very limiting.

Because in a world where we all feel like we should wear clothes that make us look as small as possible, what are we saying?

We are saying that we still aren’t good enough. We still have to be controlled. The way our bodies look need to be kept in CHECK.

This was a hard habit to break. I developed a talent for finding clothes that are “flattering” (read: slimming). I developed that skill based on what the world told women they needed to do with their clothes: be smaller looking. Which meant certain clothes stressed me out. Certain clothes were things I “couldn’t wear”.

So I have had to spend the last few years reminding myself that that is not actually something I have to do…

I don’t have to look as skinny as possible, just like I don’t need to eat the smallest amount possible.

I can wear clothes just because I like them. Or they are comfortable. Or they ‘flatter’ something else, besides our rampant obsession with being tinier than we actually are.

Let me also remind you that the actual word flattering is completely arbitrary… it’s only our fat phobic society that has made flattering mean “tinier”.

What if looking round was what we collectively decided was flattering?

So I encourage you to bring on the clothes that make you look pregnant, or rounder, or bigger, or whatever.

Your clothes don’t need to make you look more acceptable.

Your clothes can just be clothes that you like wearing, without fulfilling some sort of illusionary effect.

Your clothes don’t have to make you look smaller.