In the dieter’s house

I am spending Easter break with my family in Poland. Among other things we enjoy doing together, one of the major ones is of course feasting. We have dinners and brunches, we have cakes and traditional Polish Easter breakfast. The food tradition in Poland is just as important as in any other country. For any society on this planet, preparing and sharing food is an act of love and care for one another. We usually eat a lot around holidays and that’s both to be expected and typically not a problem at all. Our bodies will take care of this excess if we allow the natural satiety signals to drive our appetite after all this feasting 😉

Well, that works unless you are a dieter.

One of the houses I visited this Easter was a dieter’s house. The invitation was for a dinner. Being convinced that we would probably not get any dessert (dieters don’t eat sweets, right?) we bought some cake. To my surprise, which just shows how much I had forgotten what it means to be a dieter, there were two cakes served. Well, no problem – the extra cake we bought went into the fridge for another time. All fine.

I helped with the last preparations by frying some kind of „a very healthy root vegetable” as I was informed. The host then proceeded to explain all the various veggies and their amazing health benefits. I tried them all and they tasted delicious – of course they did! We brought this wonderful variety of veggies to the table to accompany an oven-baked fish. Freshly squeezed orange and grapefruit juice as well as some wine was added. The dinner was served.

It was a lot of food! We enjoyed eating it very much – it was very tasty. We were offered the seconds and the thirds and we were barely able to refuse since everything was so delicious. At some point we were full and could eat no more. All good?

Well, it would be if we were not hearing constantly how each food item on the table is great for this or that health condition. How the host has not eaten lunch and that’s why they can now eat so much. How they will gain surely x kilos after this one meal (seriously!) even though they managed to lose x kilos until now by following their healthy diet. I was so glad my husband did not understand much Polish. He gets triggered more than I do and one comment in English about the size of his belly was already sufficiently annoying. I have learned to ignore most of what I hear while sitting at the table with dieters.

The dieter ate twice as much as we did. When dessert time came, they stuffed their face with cakes, saying that it’s just because of this special occasion of having guests. Otherwise they would not have any cake of course. Promptly after desserts – I could not finish my cake so left half uneaten on my plate (thanks Intuitive Eating!)- they started eating nuts. These were natural nuts still in their shells and as they explained, this way they were super healthy for you… This is when I finally said that I can really see how their diet mind is driving them to overeat. I meant to be kind but I could see the shame arising – a shame that I know so well from my past life as a dieter.

How does it work? It’s so simple and tragic – heartbreaking really. You want to lose weight for health – you start on some diet. Regardless of which one – all of them are a restriction in one way or another. You are so “good” for a while – you eat all the lovely veggies and watch out for any „bad” foods.

Then, one day, you go out with friends to dinner or maybe invite some guests. This is the special occasion so you decide to let yourself off your diet for just one meal. You eat like it is your last meal. This is called reactionary eating and it can only happen when paired with restriction. Otherwise, it would just be a normal meal where you listen to your fullness cues and stop eating when satisfied.

After someone perhaps notices your seemingly excessive eating behavior, your shame is triggered. If you happen to binge alone, the shame simply comes on it’s own because you feel “bad”. That shame then reinforces your restrictive eating as you beat yourself up for the lapse in the diet. You don’t blame the diet – you blame yourself for breaking it. The cycle repeats endlessly. You restrict and binge more often until perhaps you just binge and you drown in shame.

It can be different. You can decide to take care of your health in a different way. You can decide to add some gentle mindful movement, add nutritious foods and simply follow your body’s signals to rest, eat and move. When there is no restriction, there is no reactionary eating. No bingeing = no shame. It may happen that you lose weight in the process, it may not. You can’t control the weight outcome but you can take care of your physical, mental and emotional health in this shame-free way.

We finished the dinner with full stomachs. Upon insistence from the host, we packed all the cakes to take home with us. They did not want to risk having any sweet treats at home. We can keep those in our fridge for days on end and just enjoy a tasty treat for our coffee break if we feel like it. Some of it may sadly go to waste if it’s not eaten in time but we are not worried about that. That’s how things look in the Intuitive Eater’s home. We have plenty of all kinds of foods and we eat what we are hungry for. We don’t eat simply because these foods are there. We stop when we are full. There are no rules – our bodies tell us what they feel like and we follow their lead.

It takes time to see “the results” of Intuitive Eating though. Many people get stuck in the restrict-binge cycle even when think they are eating intuitively. They think they are addicted. They think they have a bingeing problem alone. Neither is true! They simply don’t realize that they are still restricting. That’s why it is so helpful to work with a non-diet dietician, coach, or counselor. We need to get a bit of feedback from others to change our beliefs. Want to have a little taste of that feedback? Get in touch with me to schedule a free discovery call and I will be happy to hear your story and share my thoughts 🙂

In the meantime, please indulge at your holiday feasts without any guilt or shame. Let us all enjoy traditional foods and family gatherings this year – Happy Easter, Passover, and Ramadan Mubarak!