Why I Choose Not to Diet

I’m a personal trainer and fitness coach. I specialize in women’s weight loss. Given those credentials, the obvious question is “what’s your Diet”.

The not so obvious answer is…I choose not to.

What a Diet is … and What it isn’t.

A Diet is different then a diet. A Diet is something you’re on. It has a start date and an end date. You choose a Diet. A Diet has a name,  it’s restrictive and it tells you what to eat – more often what not to eat – instead of letting you figure it out on your own. You’re either following that Diet or you’ve utterly failed it.

A Diet is sellable. It’s easy to be told what to do. You’re told it works – so you pay for it. It’s exciting to download the meal plan that J.Lo’s dietician gave her and think “this is what will make me skinny”. It’s motivating to start following the newest trending diet – no carbs, no fat, just bone broth, paleo, cayenne water only – even if it means that you’re paying more attention to Instagram ads then to your own body. we all pay for that kind of incentive.

A diet on the other hand, is the food that you actually eat, despite the Diet that you decided on. It’s the day in a day out. It includes the kale smoothies AND the white wine. It includes the chia seeds AND the baby Snickers bars. It’s real because it’s YOURS.

The Dangerous Path that Led Me to My Decision

I choose not to Diet. Do I eat paleo meals for dinner, have gluten free breakfasts and check my portion sizes when I eat oatmeal? Sure, sometimes. But I also love blue cheese on my dinner salad, I eat local sourdough bread with breakfast and if I want more oatmeal, I eat it.

Was it always this way? Hell no.

It wasn’t until I went to college that I started to focus on my body in terms of aesthetics, what I weighed and what I could do about it. I fell for what, at the time, I thought fitness meant: losing fat, being in complete control of my food choices, working out a lot.

What started as a plan to get super fit quickly sent me spiraling into the black hole of eating disorders. I put myself on a Diet. I knew the calorie count of everything I put in my mouth. I combed magazines and websites for every rapid fat loss strategy they’d printed and I combined them into one “plan”. I spent hours at the gym on an empty stomach. I skipped parties and stopped seeing my friends, telling myself it wasn’t worth the temptation of drinks and dinners and fun. I told myself I was in control.

By the time my teachers asked me if I was okay and my parents stepped in to offer help, I was past the point of being able to pull myself out of the eating disorder that had taken over.

I had been taking in too few calories for too long, and expending far more than was safe. I didn’t have enough energy to keep myself warm, never mind make healthier decisions for myself. I’d developed anorexia and it would get scarier before it got better.

Anorexia is characterized by extreme thinness – that’s what the world sees. But that’s not what defines the disease to the person who struggles with it.

Anorexia took over me. What I thought was complete control was actually a complete loss of control to my disease. I didn’t eat food but it consumed my life. My rock bottom was dangerously close to the point of no return. I weighed 94 pounds. That’s far below the healthy minimum weight for a women my age and height.

I moved home from school. I saw a nutritionist every week. I had blood drawn so often that I was on a first name basis with the nurse practitioner’s dog. I wasn’t allowed to go to the gym. I saw a psychiatrist. I participated in a medical study for young women losing bone density. I cried over countless uneaten meals.

It took me a long time to recover from my eating disorder. Even after I was officially out of the danger zone, I struggled to maintain a healthy mindset. I struggled to ignore the calorie count of the food I was eating, to find pleasure in pizza, to eat without thinking everyone was watching me.

We don’t live in a society in which I feel comfortable saying that I’m free of all of that negativity and food-guilt. But it no longer consumes me.

 Instead

 Now, I don’t believe that restriction is a synonym of control. I don’t believe that counting calories is the answer to anything. I know that there are far more important things in life than being able to say “no” to every carbohydrate that is put on my plate.

Instead, I choose to let my body decide what I eat. I pay attention to what my body loves (veggies on every plate, salmon all day every day, avocado everything, indulging every now and then in a slice of pizza), and to what it doesn’t love (dairy at night, fake sugar, cake, pre-workout), and the becomes my diet.

My diet is simple: if it makes me feel good, I eat it.***

A Day in the Life

A typical day of eating for me looks like this:

Breakfast: 1 egg + 1 egg white scrambled with spinach and tomatoes, whole grain local bread, avocado and an orange

Lunch: giant kale salad with balsamic and olive oil topped with grilled chicken

Post-workout: scoop of protein with coconut water

Snack: ½ bag baby carrots (yes, that says ½ bag), with hummus and a few slices of cheese

Dinner: grilled salmon, baked sweet potato fries, giant side salad with blue cheese, wine

Dessert: a couple of bites of a locally made key lime pie

I’ve learned how I like to eat. If we don’t have time to cook dinner, my husband and I will go down to Bluestone and split a large salad and a small pizza. If I forget to pack breakfast, I’ll go to the Warren Store and buy a breakfast sandwich. If I’m starving, I eat more. If I’m not hungry in the morning, I bring fruit to snack on.

Anorexia was a massive catalyst for me. It pushed me, maybe harder than anyone should be pushed or needs to be pushed, to listen to my body instead of a magazine and to be mindful instead of unrelentingly strict.

And I’ve learned that if I listen to my body, I realize that I actually do love a plate full of vegetables. My body really does respond to balance. I can tell when I’ve eaten enough food to fuel my workout and when I’ve eaten enough food to fuel a nap. It’s been so long since I stopped eating fake sugar and processed crap (for the most part), that I truly don’t even miss it. I’ve learned that real food tastes far better and well, more real, than processed food ever could. I vow to never go back.

So I choose not to Diet. That doesn’t make me special or unique. If I can do it, anyone can do it. You can do it. It’s a decision that you have every right to make. You make it for you. You make it for your happiness. You make it for your future.

 

***A couple of notes about this statement:

1. I started to add more words to this statement and stopped when I realized that all I needed to sum up my diet is exactly those words. If it makes me feel good, I eat it.
2. And then, whether that food was a healthy food or a not-so-healthy-food, I move on. I’m learning to say screw you food guilt.
3. Feeling good means a couple of different things. Sometimes it means my body and brain immediately feel energized and happy. Sometimes it means that my taste buds are dancing. Good is good. And then I move on.