You’re nuts over food because of restriction.

When you restrict your food, even a little bit, the starvation response kicks in.

If you control your food, even just a little bit, the starvation response kicks in.

If you think you are going to restrict tomorrow or eventually “after you try this intuitive eating thing”, the starvation response kicks in.

If you feel guilty over what you’re eating, the starvation response can easily kick in.

It does not take much to trigger your body and brain into believing that there isn’t enough food and to trigger the starvation response.

When all you want is to lose or maintain weight, the starvation response is triggered.

Your brain and body are VERY connected when it comes to (everything… and) food, satiation, weight, hunger, and metabolism.

What happens when the starvation response kicks in?

You become fixated on food. You become hungrier. You binge. Food is all you can think about. Your metabolism gets slower. You become moody. You can become more obsessive. You can gain weight “just by thinking about food”.

That’s why eating anything and everything is essential to get to normal eating and repaired metabolism.

Mental Restriction

You cannot disassociate your brain from your body. What you think you are ingesting can actually affect what your body does metabolically.

Bingeing and feeling “out of control” around food, are often caused by actual physical restriction. Not eating enough food.)

But just as often it can be caused by just mental restriction, which is: guilt over eating, “I should cut back tomorrow”, “I really shouldn’t be eating this”, “this has got to end”, “i can’t eat like this forever”, “i’ll be good soon.” Last supper mentality: I am going to eat everything in sight now because I may never let myself again.

Because you’ve done it before, guilt over what you are eating can cause the body to expect you to deny it soon, which triggers the starvation response, which triggers food obsession.

See?

Guilt or control over what you are eating is directly sabotaging your desire to “control what you eat”. It is also directly in the way of you experiencing normal eating.

Fun Facts:

You do NOT have to be underweight to be experiencing the starvation response. If our bodies waited until we had lost lots of weight it would be a very flawed system.

Going even 5 hours in between eating can temporarily trigger the starvation response.

If you are still bingeing, you are most certainly physically or mentally restricting.

2000 calories is almost never enough food.

Read this article about The Minnesota Starvation Experiment.

Restricting is NOT giving you what you want. Letting yourself eat again will make you wanna eat the whole world. You have to lean into it, trust it. Trust that your body knows how to heal from this physical and emotional famine you’ve been on.

The only way out is through. (Robert Freaking Frost!)

When people start trying to eat normally, they almost always have to go through a phase of craving and eating things they used to think were “bad”, or things that are not generally considered “healthy”.

And it freaks. them. out.

What’s wrong with me?! Is this just proving I’m a glutton? Is this proving my eating is broken? Is this just proving that I am the one person who won’t do this right? This is PROOF I need a diet!?

No. It’s just proof that you were in a starvation state before (even if you weren’t underweight or physically restricting. YEP! Because you don’t have to be underweight to be metabolically compromised, and you don’t even have to under eat to trigger the biological starvation response, you just have to “mentally restrict”.)

Most people who are gravitating towards my site have enough knowledge or pseudo knowledge about nutrition to last them a few lifetimes.

That’s why any talk of nutrition here is pointless. The issue isn’t that you don’t know enough about nutrition, it’s that you know too much. And your knowledge has royally fucked with your happiness and ability to listen to your body.

Nutrition these days can be so limiting, restrictive, and fearful. All we tend to focus on is what’s bad. What we should avoid. And, voila: eating disorders.

That’s why my view on nutrition is this:

Nourish yourself.

Nourish yourself with fruit. With vegetables. With Dairy. With Sugar. With Carbs, complex and simple. With Meat. With Greens. With Soup. With Butter. With Sea Salt. With Sweet Potatoes. With Pasta. With Sauerkraut. With Brownies. With Ice Cream.

These foods are healing.

If you think that sugar and carbs and fat and calories and weight are still bad for you, you have a few things to read. Read Health at Every Size. Read In Defense of Sugar.

If you’re allergic or sensitive to certain foods, trust that you can honor that while not restricting. It’s all about self care.

Real, beautiful food is healing. Calories are healing. Vitamins are healing. Minerals are healing. Sugar is healing. Meat and broths and stews and starch are healing.

We need food. We need filling food. We need good, delicious, salty, nourishing food.

And all that processed or “fake food” you’re still scared of still serves a purpose.

It is liberating.

Processed food is emotional freedom. Processed food is “Fuck it, I don’t need to be the healthiest eater on this planet. Look where it’s gotten me anyway: nowhere.”

So stop worrying about toxins and all that “bad food”. Your body was built to handle that stuff. It was NOT built however, to constantly feel like it doesn’t have enough. Jk… it was actually. It’s called starvation mode. And it’s not good for you.

Remember these key points:

1. Less is not better. You need food. If you are afraid you can’t trust your hunger, stop. Trust your hunger and food desire above all else.
2. Eat things you love and want. If you truly do that you will be amazed how much your cravings and tastes do change and lead you right!
3. Celery is not better than pie. Seriously. Celery is not better for you than pie. Pie has way more nutrition in it. Celery just has some vitamins and minerals. Apple pie has vitamins and minerals, and way more calories, protein, fat, and carbs, which are necessary to nourish you. Celery is not better for you than pie. Kale is not better for you than ice cream. They are all good for you.

Ok, fuck it. Bye!

Maybe you’ve already been able to tell this… but I’m “into energy”.

I’m woo-woo.

I believe in soul purposes, and alignment, and intuition, and epiphanies, energy and God/Universe/Life/Spirit/Higher Power/Divine (whatever you want to call it). I work with Chakras. I believe that healing your relationship to your life goes hand in hand with healing your relationship to food. They are unable to be untangled from each other.

So let me talk about something very practical – that is so essential to this Fuck It Diet and normal eating and happy vibrant living- that also has an intense energetic component: being grounded or being in your body.

You’ve heard people talk about this before, right?

The idea of being in your body.

Also known as presence.

Also known as grounding.

Think about this right now: Are you in your body?

Are you actually experiencing what it feels like to be in your body?

Or are you doing everything in your power to avoid it?

Most people do. MOST people avoid being in their bodies to no end. Because it freaks them the f*** out. Being in our bodies makes us come to terms with things we don’t want to have to deal with.

It makes us feel things we want to be able to avoid.

So much information, pain, emotion, trauma, memory, energy… it all gets stored in the body when we aren’t willing or able to deal with it head on and process it. We can’t cope, so we escape the body through our worry, excessive thought, tv, dieting, escape escape escape escape.

We rarely are willing to be in our bodies. Feel them. Breathe. Feel the discomfort. The realness. The anxiety.

It all has stuff to teach us!

All of the feelings, emotions, sensations have things to teach us. And until we are willing to be with them and feel it all, we won’t be able to learn from what’s there and move forward.

Grounding

This all sort of came together with me when I was taking this energy class that taught us how to work with the chakras.

We were learning about how these different chakra energy portals in our bodies are correlated with all the different aspects of our life, from the very physical, and our relationships, to our heart, our voice, our intuition, all the way up through our connection to the divine, and everything in between.

And when we talked about Grounding, I had one of my clicks. Yes! This makes so much sense! This has SO much to do with The Fuck It Diet!

Grounding is associated with the root chakra. The lowest one. The one that represents and links us to this physical experience. It has to do with food, family, bodies, manifestation and bringing ideas into the physical, and it is all to do with BEING IN YOUR BODY and rooting your energy to the earth.

We are so rarely in our bodies. And it can be so hard to stay in our bodies because we are faced with all of the things and feelings we’ve avoided.

But, we have to start. We can’t keep avoiding living in this body, in this life, now.

(If you like hearing about this kind of stuff, chakras, energy, etc… you can sign up for my little free chakra course and I will update you with energy related Fuck It Diet stuff.

I’m also doing an energy webinar with the wonderful Alexis Saloutos who I studied with next week on Grounding, and will update the people who have signed up for the chakra course.)

2 practical things you can do:

Being in Your Body- 10 minutes

Lie down for 10 minutes and breathe. No distractions. Just feel what it’s like to be in your body, not escaping, for 10 minutes. Be bored if you must. Or let your mind unkink and unwind. Feel what’s there. If anything comes up feel it, if not, chill. Feel your body. Feel what it feels like to be where you are now. There’s not much too this except allowing whatever is to be what it is.

Congrats you just practiced being in your body. This will help when you feel the urge to escape through “vices”: food, dieting, etc – this is practice in feeling what is already there. Instead of trying to escape it.

Grounding- 20 seconds

Take a deep breathe and imagine bringing your energy into your body. If that feels like the most abstract thing you’ve ever heard, I understand. Just pretend you can do it. Just imagine it. Imagine you bringing your energy from wherever it is – wherever it is floating around – into your body.

And feel it there. What does that feel like? Hot? Cold? Tingly? Sore? Moving? Static? (There’s no right or wrong).

Then imagine sending that energy you pulled back into your body also down into the earth. Flow it down through the floor, down through the basement, down through the dirt, into the rocks and spreading into the earth below you.

How does that feel?

You can easily do that grounding visualization in about…. 20 seconds altogether or less.

What do you guys  think about this stuff? Wanna hear more? Sign up for my free little chakra course. And let me know!