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.