When you want to eat normally and listen to your body, but are petrified of gaining weight – you will never be able to eat normally.

When you want to get another helping because you are still hungry, but choose not to because you are petrified of gaining weight- you are not eating normally.

When you want to accept your body – unless you gain weight – you just will not be able to listen to your body and eat normally.

Our twisted relationship with our weight is the biggest and most insidious cause of screwy eating.

And the hardest part, is that for years we have believed that keeping our weight low was important, essential, responsible, healthy, and praise-worthy.

We have been petrified of gaining weight because somewhere along the way we learned and believed that weight gain was a horrible, horrible fate.

It’s not.

We also believe that without control, we will balloon up into a person we don’t know, who can’t do anything, who won’t fit anywhere, and who won’t be loved.

That’s not going to happen either.

Not only is weight gain NOT exponential (meaning it won’t keep going up and up and up forever, it’s normally quick, then it tapers and stabilizes, and often, lowers. That’s what the body wants, stabilization.)

But weight has nothing to do with your ability to love and be loved, with your ability to have an awesome social life, with your ability to be successful and make lots of money, or with your general worth and happiness.

The paradigm is all in our heads. When we believe we can’t be happy, we can’t. When we believe we can, we can.

Lastly, when people gain weight in response to restriction, it is because the body wants and needs that weight to repair itself and to know there is ample food.

Eating a lot, hunger, and quick weight gain are actually biological GIFTS. Nothing is spiraling out of control. It’s just biology. It’s just weight. It means nothing about you except you’re finally feeding yourself.

If you want to learn to eat normally, without over thinking it, you must change your relationship to your weight.

The paradox is, if you want weight to be stable and normal, you have to stop trying to control it.

You’re doing great. Keep going.

Q: Intellectually I understand the HAES paradigm and would love to live by it. But have you ever been obese? Like over 200 pounds and you can *feel* the weight of it? If you haven’t, maybe you can’t understand that burden. You might know what body hatred feels like, but being truly overweight is something else. Or is it?

 

I appreciate the meat of this question, and I am going to respond with both compassion and tough love.

No, I haven’t been over 200 lbs. My experience with weight yo-yo-ing has been about 35 lbs up and down.

I also happen to know that the person who sent this question knows that answer already, that I’ve never been 200 lbs. So what they’re really saying is: Normal eating and body acceptance? It can work for you but not for me. I have a burden you can’t understand.

I get that to some of my readers it might feel alienating when I talk about body acceptance, especially if they feel like I can’t understand what it’s like to be in their bodies. I get it. All I can do about it is remind you that there are women out there who are living, breathing, badass examples of the confident woman you don’t believe you can be at xxx lbs.

Virgie Tovar, Ragen Chastain, Jes Baker, and Tess Holiday are some examples. They are big, they are beautiful, they are confident, they are unapologetic. At least one is very active. One is a model. One is a writer ‘anti-assimilationist’ badass, among other things. I’m sure they ‘*feel* the weight of it’ (yes, the actual weight), and the difference is that they’ve learned to feel that weight and not see it as a burden, or at least not use that excuse as a reason to stay hating themselves. But honestly, I shouldn’t speak for them. They will say it all better than me.

I also have to say, we all have burdens that feel like they are *the worst burdens*, burdens that other people can’t understand. For instance, I have both genetic and hormonal excess hair that makes me feel culturally and aesthetically unacceptable. I will look at a woman who is 200+ lbs with smooth skin and I easily envy them, assuming they are healthier than me, and that they might even have an easier, better life than me. I now know enough about envy and happiness and body shame to snap out of it, but it happens. I’ve also had chronic cystic acne. And I was missing 9 adult teeth and looked like a gremlin in high school before I had major teeth work done. I could choose to compare myself to everyone else for the rest of my life, and sometimes I’m tempted to, and then I remember how that is actively choosing my misery.

I stand by the advice that it is our feelings and beliefs about the weight on our bodies that actually make the difference. That’s the part that actually causes the self-hatred. You feel weight, which is actually neutral, but still have attached a million other connotations to the weight, and those are the real burdens.

I really do feel for you. This world is still absolutely unfair and cruel to fat people. That is a legitimate burden. It takes bravery. It takes confidence. It takes a lot of letting go. Have I experienced fat prejudice first hand? No. I really haven’t. I can only empathize and do the work I am doing for the benefit of people of all sizes.

And when people ask questions like this, as if to say: “Just admit it, body acceptance isn’t gonna work, is it?” I am also here to remind you that at the end of the day, all we can do is care a little less about the bullshit, and care a little more about your precious life, and the sunshine, and the laughs to be had, cause it’s all going quicker by the day. Don’t waste it all by thinking you’re not allowed to like yourself just because you feel weight on your body.

And as much as I understand the sentiment and frustration behind this question, my response will never be: You know, you’re right. Ignore me. Keep dieting. I don’t understand what it’s like, so it’s probably impossible to love your body if you’re fat after all. Being skinny is the only answer. Only then will you be truly free and truly happy.

And I have to guess, that by the way you worded the end of your question, you know that’s not true either.

Check out those ladies I mentioned 😉 And anyone who wants to share more fat role models, share in the comments.

People going through their own healing relationship with food always want to know what other people’s experiences were like. Understandably. It can be helpful to hear what someone else went through, and it can be inspiring to hear how different they now feel on the other side.

But it can also be dangerous if you start comparing every little thing in your journey to someone else’s.

Oh man, I’m experiencing this thing they didn’t. It must not be working for me.

Oh man they felt normal after a 2 months?!

So if you can remember that everyone’s starting place, journey, and timeline is different, I’ll talk about what the stages of my Fuck It Diet were. The Master Fuck It Diet, if you will. The Fuck It Diet that started the Fuck It Diet. Ok.

Pre Fuck It Diet: Lots of diets. Lots of body dysmorphia. Orthorexia. Lots of constant thinking about my weight. Some very dedicated bouts of “intuitive eating”, which were very rules-based attempts, and I was still very concerned with the whole thing resulting in making me skinny. I considered myself “healed” many times (cause I was sometimes skinny and sort-of eating what I wanted.)

Phase 1: EPIPHANY: “I’m so miserable, I’m bingeing, I’m irrationally obsessed with being skinny, and I think I have body dysmorphia.”

This was a BIG time of discovery. This was a BIG time of shifting my perspective on weight. It’s when I realized that weight was THE REASON I was unable to eat normally. My health fear was secondary.

This was when I decided I needed to allow myself to gain weight. This was when I realized that the more I ate the better it would be. This is when I read Health at Every Size.

I was still afraid of gluten during this time, trying to slowly add in foods that freaked me out. It last a few months.

Phase 2: AHHHHHHH!

This was when I started reading The Artist’s Way, which lined up with, and continued to challenge my relationship to, perfectionism and control.

This was when I started this very site you are reading. This was when I felt like I NEED TO SHARE EVERYTHING I AM LEARNING.

I bought bigger clothes. I now ate bread. I was still afraid of everything but I was doing it, sometimes worrying I was going to ruin everything… but I was still doing it.

I would say this phase lasted 1.5 years and I had moments of thinking I could try to “eat healthy”, which means, feeling I should eat a certain way, for a week here and there. Then I’d wake up.

Body image was both really hard, and also very liberating.

I started puffing out my stomach on purpose to be like YEA MY STOMACH IS FILLED WITH FOOD, WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT, WORLD!?

My fears of food and eating mostly went away during the course of this phase.

Phase 3: Energy Work This phase started with me doing EFT/Tapping on my residual fears about weight. The willingness to feel what was scary to feel before, and processing old shit. This shifted a LOT more for me, and I barely thought about my weight, and started eating even more. Lost some weight accidentally.

Phase 4: Weight-Neutral Broke up with a boyfriend, gained some weight, and didn’t give a shit and decided to just keep doing what I was doing and accept the weight if it was supposed to be part of my life. This was big.

This phase is probably the same phase I am in now. Phase 4. Healed with food and a de-charged relationship with my weight.

And let me say, my weight has fluctuated. Not wildly, no, it’s still so much more stable, no matter what I eat. Other things seem to change it, like seasons and emotions and hormones and … just other things. Because that’s life. Nothing stays the same. We are always in flux. Weight is just another one of those things.

This last and longest phase has been accompanied by lots of spiritual, emotional, and energy work, which hasn’t been used for my relationship with food, because that’s been good, but more the other parts of my life. Basically, now that my food is normal, the question is, how can I live more? How can I apply The Fuck It Diet to all areas in my life?

That’s the goal guys. Get past the food stuff and into the life stuff.

Food is just the beginning.

You got this.

(News: I have a podcast! Listen! Rate it! Review it on iTunes!)