Tag: intuitive eating

How To Stop Counting Calories

There was a point in my life where I figured I would just be stuck counting calories forever, resigned to a life of sadness and disordered behavior.  However, this proved to be untrue as I transitioned from a religious calorie counter to an intuitive eater – and you can too.

When you stop counting calories, you start enjoying and experiencing your food for its texture and flavor instead of as just a number.  Eating becomes pleasurable when you aren’t constantly measuring, calculating, tracking, and obsessing over the food on your plate.  You’ll open up space in your brain to focus on things that actually matter.  You’ll be able to start eating intuitively by creating a stronger relationship to your body’s cravings and the food you eat.  Obsession with food will fall by the wayside.

The truth is, no matter how accurate you think your calculations are using your BMI, TDEE, BMR, etc. to calculate the right amount of calories for you – there is no way to truly know as every single body is different.  More to the point, without going crazy it is completely impossible to accurately know the calories of every food you eat.  Remember, all a calorie is is a unit of energy and our bodies NEED energy to live.  So here are some tips to stop counting calories forever.

GET RID OF CALORIE TRACKERS
This is a big one. I tracked all of my calories on “My Fitness Pal” but there are many others like it.  Cronometer, Lose It, Fat Secret, etc.  These apps were built to count calories so the best first step for a life without this burden is to get rid of them!  If you aren’t using an app than get rid of whatever device you use to track the numbers.  A notebook, planner, journal, or word document.  Delete it, burn it, or have a friend drive 20 miles away and throw it in a dumpster.  Getting that out of your life is a crucial first step.

GO OUT TO EAT AT RESTAURANTS
Most restaurants are impossible to gauge to calories for because you don’t know everything that goes into the food preparation. It helps to make sure you are with a friend or family member that can keep you distracted from trying to break down and calculate the meal components.  If you are financially incapable of dining out, that’s alright – just have a friend or family member cook a meal for you without telling you what is in it.  This is essentially the same concept.  You are looking to let go of the tightly wound control you have to maintain while counting calories by letting go of the control over food prep.

BLOCK OUT NUTRITION LABELS
Take a sharpie and cover them up so that you can’t look at them obsessively. Go grocery shopping in bulk bins or for items that don’t have nutrition labels on them at local shops of farmers markets.  Pick food for flavor and not for numbers.

HAVE FAITH YOURSELF TO EAT INTUITIVELY, BUT BE PATIENT
We are all born knowing how to eat. Your body knows what it needs and it is not trying to sabotage you.  It loves you and want to keep you alive, return the favor to it.  Eating intuitively takes practice but it is completely achievable for all of us since it is the way we are supposed to eat.  Remember that it will take time as well because you are breaking a very bad habit – and habits are not broken overnight.

If any of these steps seem impossible or overwhelming than feel free to take it slow.  I know how daunting and unreasonable these may seem – but if you implement these tactics into just one meal a day at first, and then slowly increase, you will eventually get there.  Take it from a girl who used to count the calories in gum – you can do this!

 

Interview With Caroline Dooner – Creator of The Fuck It Diet

Untitled-design-12Recently I had the absolute pleasure of connecting with Caroline Dooner.  Caroline is the creator of The Fuck It Diet, which teaches radical normal eating to chronic dieters. She also teaches intuition and advocates hardcore for #rest. You can follow her on instagram, and get her free intro course, “Eating Should Be Easy” over on The Fuck It Diet.

When I was going through my own recovery I stumbled upon her website and it felt as if her words were speaking directly to me.  Caroline has been through the ringer of diet culture and found a way out that I strived to emulate.  Her writing and philosophies on making eating simple were such powerful sources of inspiration for me and many others trapped in diet culture.  Today she continues to help people through her blog, podcasts, and e-books.  She believes that eating should be easy because, fuck it, it’s just food right?

I was delighted when she agreed to answer some of my burning questions and it was wonderful to be able to get her seasoned perspective.

RR: Why the name “The Fuck It Diet”?

CD: It’s how I felt when I finally realized that dieting was backfiring and doing the opposite of what I have always hoped it would. It’s how I felt after being on diet after diet, hoping that the next one would finally heal my food addiction. It is the true exasperation of realizing it’s never going to work.

RR: What was the life event that inspired you to start the site?

CD: I had been dieting obsessively for 10 years. You could call it an eating disorder, or you could just call it obsessive dieting, there is a big overlap for lots of people anyway. But I was Paleo, and bingeing on all the paleo treats I could get my hands on, and finally started hearing whispers in the Paleo community, that not eating enough carbs will hurt your metabolism, and wreck your hormones, and make you more insulin resistant, which had been the thing I was trying to heal.

But the event/moment that spawned it, was my 24th birthday. I binged on squash pancakes and low sugar almond flour cupcakes, and had a legitimate epiphany. I can’t do this anymore. This is going to keep happening over and over and over, until I step out of this cycle, learn to eat normally, and heal my relationship to weight.

 I had tried to heal my eating many times before, going on stints of intuitive eating, or something similar. But it was never truly the cure, because I was still trying to eat the smallest amount possible, and still petrified of gaining weight. The Fuck It Diet was different.

RR: How long did it take for you to heal your relationship with food? 

CD: It was a process that evolved over the first few years of my no-holds-barred eating, and my work on deeper and deeper body acceptance. But I would say that between 6 months to a year is where I noticed a big shift.

Even still, just over the course of eating a certain food for a week would change my relationship with that certain food. So there were small victories, and then bigger shifts that happened over time.

RR: In your opinion, what you think the most negative impact of diet culture is?

CD: It’s really hard to choose just one, but diet culture puts you at odds with your body. The way you trust it, and your appetite, and your weight. It makes you totally out of touch with your own wisdom, intuition, cravings. And ruins your health and self-esteem.

RR: Do you think that diet culture is responsible for the rising rate of eating disorders?

CD: Hell to the yes.

RR: Your blog and podcast focuses a lot on spiritual healing – do you think it’s harder to recover if you aren’t spiritual?

CD: Ah yes, it’s such a good question. I have always been seeking guidance, or peace, or help, or knowledge on a spiritual level. And I know that is why and how TFID revealed itself to me. But there are some pretty basic facts and truths, like the biological and metabolic reaction to restriction. Even energetic principals aren’t necessarily “spiritual”. And I am expressly anti-dogma of any kind, diet dogma, spiritual dogma, or otherwise.

Trust in a bigger picture, and a bigger purpose than just being tiny and beautiful will certainly be a big help, but short answer: no. You don’t have to be spiritual to recover.

(pssst. she has a great podcast about this topic here)

RR: What would you say to girls who are afraid of this mindset because of their fear of getting “fat”?

CD: That this is what those businesses want you to fear. That that is just this heartbreaking thing that we have been perpetuating, and it’s so destructive and toxic. And I understand, I was the same way for years. Fat was the last thing I would ever accept being. It’s also because we have so many beliefs about what being fat means. But it’s just so misguided. What’s that JK Rowling quote? “is ‘fat’ really the worst thing a human being can be? Is ‘fat’ worse than ‘vindictive’, ‘jealous’, ‘shallow’, ‘vain’, ‘boring’ or ‘cruel’?”

RR: What is your most important tip to successfully practice intuitive eating?

CD: Do not get caught in the trap of believing you need to be eating the smallest amount possible. That’s a diet. We need to actually feed ourselves.

RR: What has been the most inspiring recovery story you’ve witnessed/had a hand in?

CD: It’s honestly too hard to choose, but in general, my favorite kind of story, and this happens again and again, is that healing from food and weight obsession, opens up a confidence and creative spark that allows people to really trust their own genius, go against the grain, choose a life that people might not understand. It let’s people really listen to their true desires.

RR: What is your number one piece of advice to someone struggling to recover/normalize their relationship with food?

CD: Do not discount how interconnected our relationship with weight is with our relationship with food. You cannot heal the one without the other.

RR: And finally, just for fun – what’s your favorite food?

CD: My favorite food is cheese. No contest.

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Huge thanks to Caroline for giving me the opportunity to pick her brain.  It meant a lot for me to be able to have this opportunity considering how incredibly helpful I found The Fuck It Diet and everything she put into it while I was struggling to recover.  If you’ve never heard of The Fuck It Diet – it’s about time you checked it out!

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Diet Myths Busted!

Diets rarely work, they’re based on information perpetuated by companies that are interested in selling products and don’t have the interest of the actual consumer in mind.  Diet culture has taken over our society and it is a harmful trigger to many eating disorders, especially orthorexia.  Here we will take 5 popular diet myths that have gained popularity and begin to understand why they’re wrong… and bust them! (if you’re confused why I’m saying “busted” instead of “debunked” then take a peek at the video above..)

Cutting carbs helps you lose weight – Newsflash! Your body uses carbs as its main source of energy! When you cut out carbs the myth proclaims that your body will burn fat stores as energy but the truth is it burns muscle tissue.  When your body starts breaking down this lean muscle your metabolism slows down because muscle keeps your metabolism up.  There’s a lot of health risks involved in cutting carbs out of your intake.  Also low carb diets are just a fad diet, meaning the second you lose the ridiculous amount of self control it takes to keep them up all of the weight will come piling back – especially since your metabolism was lowered in the process.

Eating fat can make you fat – This has got to be one of the most bullshit diet myths out there.  And it was all conceived so that food companies could make more money by selling low fat processed versions of their products.  The truth is that healthy fats can help prevent and reverse heart disease, shut off cravings, and speed up your metabolism. In fact if losing weight is what you are aiming to do, eating fats regularly in your diet while eating intuitively has proved to make you feel full faster and for longer thus leading to less overall consumption of calories naturally without intentional restriction. Plus fat adds flavor and enjoyment to life and that’s what’s important.

Eating after 8 is bad –Apparently the reasoning behind this particular myth is that if you eat too close to bed time then your body won’t have the time to burn off the energy by moving around during the day.  Here’s the thing though, your body uses the calories you consume whether you are moving or sleeping.  Even while you’re sleeping (actually especially while you are sleeping) your metabolism is resetting all of your bodies systems and pushing you through REM sleep – it needs energy to do all of that and ensure you get a good nights sleep.  Also, Is your body a business?  Does it have closing hours?  Hell no – if you are hungry after 8 then EAT – it’s always better to honor your body’s cravings in an effort to eat intuitively then it is to ignore the natural signals your body is sending you.

Only eat once you’re hungry – Why wait until you are miserable and hungry to eat?   Why ever put yourself in this state when you could just keep yourself satiated all day long? If you eat breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner on a regular schedule and each meal or snack before you become starved then you’ll always be satisfied and never miserable.  From a weight loss perspective this is ideal because when you are hungry then you are more likely to binge on food out of starvation, whereas if you eat regularly the urge to overeat is less likely to come up.

 Losing weight is all about willpower – This myth perpetuates yet another myth that not-thin people are lazy or lack self control which extends into the real world thin privileged society we all live in.  There are so many more factors than just “willpower” that factor into every individuals ability to lose weight whether those are genetic, environmental, hormonal, etc.  Plus, some people aren’t meant to be rail thin and their metabolism protects them from that.  There is so much more to losing weight healthily than just self control or willpower.