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.

I talk a lot about eating to heal your metabolism.

When we restrict, it slows down our bodies (“metabolism”). Your body is trying to conserve energy and trying to get you to eat. Restriction of any kind will cause you to fixate on food, be hungrier, more tired, and put on weight quicker – to save your life. Those are all signs of a slow metabolism.

The simple, straight-forward, and only way to heal your famine metabolism, is to eat and rest.

Eating (normally a lot) is the natural response to restriction/dieting. It is the only cure. It is what the body is asking for, and indulging it teaches the body that there is no more restriction. It allows the body to put on weight just-in-case of another famine/diet, and encourages the body that it is safe to speed back up to a normal metabolism and slowly get out of conservation mode.

If you let yourself eat, you will eventually heal your metabolism.

Of course, most people who are going on the fuck it diet are anxious to heal their metabolism quickly, and make sure they are “doing it right”. This is because of a deep-seated fear of gaining weight.

So I get lots of questions about how to know whether your metabolism is healed or not.

I tell people to look at common sense and logic here.

If you’d been in a famine, how long do you think it would take to re-feed yourself? A few months? A year? What feels right based on how long you have been restricting?

And how would you know things were back to normal?

Your weight would stabilize in a weight rage right for you (probably higher than you were seeking in your diet days). Your appetite would normalize and become easier to satiate, yet still hungry consistently for ample food, (because that is what is means to be alive and how a normal metabolism works! We need to eat!)

You’ll also have more real energy. More willingness and energy to go for a walk. More of a craving to move your body. Not out of stress or “shoulds” or worry that you’re getting flabby, but because you genuinely want to… move.

Being tired is a big sign that you need to rest. Duh…

But the most important thing for me to remind anyone who is wondering whether their metabolism is healed or not: is that no matter whether it is or not, eating is the answer. 

Eating and resting will heal a stressed or repressed metabolism. And eating will keep a healthy metabolism healthy. Always, the answer is: eat.

To a diet mind, who thought they’d be healthy once they weren’t hungry any more, this is something you have to re-learn. A healthy metabolism is hungry. For food. That will sustain and repair all your organs and muscles etc…

Eating. It’s how humans stay alive, remember?

Yesterday I was getting dressed into a costume for a show I am rehearsing. (I’m a sometimes-actress, all-the-time-anti-diet-teacher). I had just eaten a big, delicious dinner at my friend’s house and was really, really full.

And as I stood in the dressing room, stretching out my tights and pulling up my underwear so the velcro of the mic pack belt didn’t scratch my skin, but also making sure it fell at the right part of my waste under my tights so it didn’t look bizarre under my costume… I remembered all those times when I would have been doing the exact same thing, but let feeling full ruin my night and take over my brain.

Body dysmorphia – and all the irrational thoughts that accompany it – is a real beast. Seriously… it is the thing that can keep people stuck for a long time.

Because, as I’ve said many times, our feelings and beliefs about our bodies are at the root of everything that the Fuck It Diet is trying to fix and heal.

Try to fix your eating without fixing the way you look at your body, will leave you in limbo.

Your feelings about your body are at the heart of the matter.

Last night I remembered how skewed my thoughts would quickly become about my body. I would zoom in on every little thing. I blew things out of proportion. I worried about what other people were thinking about my body (note: 90+% of the time they were NOT thinking about my body). I worried about what fullness meant. I worried that I was doing things wrong. That I had made a mistake by eating the way I ate. And on and on and on.

This is hard habit to heal. I want to tell you that it’s simple, easy, quick and straight-forward. But this is the panic that you will induce very easily during the beginning of the Fuck It Diet. You will bump into your old beliefs about your body and your eating, and you will need to face them and deal with them.

We need to examine the limiting beliefs below our stress to pin-point the cause of our panic. Really be kind and patient with yourself and examine what your brain is doing when you stress out about your body.

These are learned beliefs that I encourage you to unlearn. That is what I encourage and guide the people I work with to do.

Yesterday I ate a lot of baked goods, donuts, and bagels, and a huge dinner before getting back into very tight tights. This would have been a reason to freak out, worry, spin, and decide that my body and eating were completely out of control and how would I get them back under control?!?!?!

Truth is: everything with your body is normal, good, and fine.  Fullness is normal. Body fat is safe and acceptable and beautiful. Bodies are resilient. Keep coming back to this, and I promise one day you will be able to get into tight tights when you are extremely full, and the way you used to panic will be only a distant memory.