There are lots of places to find stats and studies that support Fuck It Diet metabolism logic: Health at Every Size, Body Respect, The Eating Disorder Institute, all accounts of the Minnesota Starvation Experiment… These will delve further into what is happening hormonally and chemically when you restrict and repress the body’s metabolic function with dieting.

But I like to explain it in simple logic.

What makes sense, biologically, when there is a food shortage? Does it make biological sense that as we evolved to survive famine that our bodies would let us easily cut back on food and lose weight?

No.

A list of biological processes are started when the body senses restriction. Food fixation and slowed metabolism being the biggest and most notable ones. The desire for the body to combat starvation by wiring you to seek food and put ON WEIGHT is the reason why diets will fail time and time again.

I argue that it is a very rare person who can sanely diet, lose weight, and keep it off healthfully and happily. It happens I have heard, but it is very rare and I know none of those people personally.

In addition, a “sane and happy dieter” would never be someone fixated or worried about their weight. The people who diet, lose weight, and keep it off for years normally have some sort of eating disorder, where what they eat and what they weigh is top of mind. This is actually bad for your health and your metabolism. This puts you in a repressed and tired metabolic state, fixated on food, for the rest of your life. This is not the gold standard. You do not want an eating disorder no matter how many times people joke about it.

And most people? Just can’t do it. Their bodies fight back against the restriction. Their bodies speak too strongly to maintain a restrictive eating disorder. A binge disorder normally ensues here. These people just think they have poor will power.

Not so. It is just the way we are wired.

And what is the cure?

Eating. Lots of eating.

And Resting.

Months and months and months of this. That is how a metabolism heals.

Learning to trust your cravings.

And, just as importantly, changing the way you look at your weight and worth. Changing the way you look at your body. Changing your priorities when it comes to weight. And re-learning what beauty and happiness looks and feels like.